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77937df Instead of looking to increase our pleasure in life, they think, we should try to become better people and do the right thing. That is what makes a life go well. Nigel Warburton
a003eda Epicurus summed up his whole philosophy in his epitaph: 'I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind' If Nigel Warburton
32d2a53 Alguem que ica as velas de um barco e assim se deixa levar pelas tempestades nao esteve numa viagem; apenas foi jogado de um lado para o outro. O mesmo acontece com a vida. Estar fora de controle, ser carregado pelos acontecimentos sem ter tempo para as experiencias mais valiosas e significativas, e bem diferente de viver verdadeiramente. seneca Nigel Warburton
3983bda The message is that riches, power and honour are worthless since they can come and go. No one should base their happiness on such fragile foundations. Happiness has to come from something that is more solid, something that can't be taken away. As Boethius believed that he would continue to live after death, seeking happiness in trivial worldly things was a mistake. Nigel Warburton
50407d8 In this short philosophical novel he completely undermined the kind of optimism about humanity and the universe that Pope and Leibniz had expressed, and he did it in such an entertaining way that the book became an instant bestseller. Wisely Voltaire left his name off the title page, otherwise its publication would have landed him in prison again for making fun of religious beliefs. Candide is the central character. His name suggests innoce.. Nigel Warburton
9bd4675 But the basis of Freud's ideas aren't accepted by all philosophers, though many accept that he was right about the possibility of unconscious thought. Some have claimed that Freud's theories are unscientific. Most famously, Karl Popper (whose ideas are more fully discussed in Chapter 36) described many of the ideas of psychoanalysis as 'unfalsifiable'. This wasn't a compliment, but a criticism. For Popper, the essence of scientific research.. Nigel Warburton
015bcfe The idea that religious beliefs but not others should receive special protection is bizarre: all types of belief should be open to scrutiny, criticism, parody, and potentially ridicule in a free society. Indeed, Nigel Warburton
e4021f7 We are all basically selfish, driven by fear of death and the hope of personal gain, Nigel Warburton
70d531e Marx's main interest was in economic relationships since in his view they shape everything that we are and can become. Nigel Warburton
3b0aba5 Everything we perceive takes place in time and space, and every change has a cause. But according to Kant, that is not because of the way reality ultimately is: it is a contribution of our minds. We don't have direct access to the way the world is. Nor can we ever take the glasses off and see things as they truly are. We're stuck with this filter and without it we would be completely unable to experience anything. All we can do is recognize.. Nigel Warburton
fb70dc9 wisdom and understanding in the course of human history will only come fully at a late stage, when we're looking back on what has already happened, like someone looking back on the events of a day as night falls. Nigel Warburton
63193e8 Without free expression humankind may be robbed of ideas that would otherwise have contributed to its development. Preserving freedom of speech maximizes the chance of truth emerging from its collision with error and half-truth. It also reinvigorates the beliefs of those who would otherwise be at risk of holding views as dead dogma. Nigel Warburton
d5601e5 In 1755 one of the worst natural disasters of the eighteenth century occurred: the Lisbon earthquake that killed more than 20,000 people. This Portuguese city was devastated not just by the earthquake, but also by the tsunami that followed, and then by fires that raged for days. Nigel Warburton
d7fb93e Those who do the right thing don't do it simply because of how they feel: the decision has to be based on reason, reason that tells you what your duty is, regardless of how you happen to feel. Nigel Warburton
49bfcea the mind shaping reality just is reality. There is nothing beyond it. But this did not mean that reality remained in a fixed state. For Hegel, everything is in a process of change, and that change takes the form of a gradual increase in self-awareness, our state of self-awareness being fixed by the period in which we live. Nigel Warburton
b38f6ce If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Nigel Warburton
ac12663 There once was a man who said 'God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad. Nigel Warburton
ccc4cbd For Mill, the acknowledgment of his or her own fallibility is part of what makes someone a serious thinker. Human knowledge progresses when people recognize that they may be wrong even on issues that seem certain to them. Wisdom involves openness to those who disagree with us. It is only when our ideas have been subjected to criticism and all objections considered--if necessary seeking these objections out--that we have any right to think o.. Nigel Warburton
d6149c5 Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd: I am always about in the Quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully, God. Nigel Warburton
d40be85 As a young man he had been a brave soldier fighting in the Peloponnesian wars against the Spartans and their allies. In middle age he shuffled around the marketplace, stopping people from time to time and asking them awkward questions. That was more or less all he did. Nigel Warburton
62ea8cc There is no poststructuralist person - no completely decentered subject for whom all meaning is arbitrary, totally relative, and purely historically contingent, unconstrained by body and brain. The mind is not merely embodied, but embodied in such a way that our conceptual systems draw largely upon the commonalities of our bodies and of the environments we live in. The result is that much of a person's conceptual system is either universal .. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
bff21ee I may some day get a boyfriend and eventually a husband, but you will always be my first loves." -Sheetal, 14, Qatar" 5sos ashton-irwin calum-hood luke-hemmings michael-clifford music Jazmin Williams
2c8e870 We feel that we fit into this fandom even if we're an outcast or misfits in this world." -Mary, 16, Philippines" ashton-irwin calum-hood fan luke-hemmings michael-clifford music Jazmin Williams
f1f15d6 Why, Mr. Anderson?, Why, why?. Why do you do it? Why, why get up?. Why keep fighting?. Do you believe you're fighting...for something?. For more than your survival?. Can you tell me what it is?. Do you even know?; Is it freedom?, Or truth?. Perhaps peace?. Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is withou.. existence fight freedom human-beings illusions love matrix passion perception persistence survival survival-instinct truth why why-we-live win William Irwin
29ec916 As Rorschach so poetically put it, "This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not god who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."12" William Irwin
7c75d77 They have a voice and I love seeing them in such a positive way. - JC, 15, USA 5sos ashton-irwin calum-hood luke-hemmings michael-clifford Jazmin Williams
7a12a1f Alice's message for today--in Wonderland and the world at large--is that young women can do anything they like. William Irwin
67869e1 when I see an author on this week's talk show promoting his Secret to Happiness, I can't help wondering what happened to last week's Secret on the same show. William Irwin
09deaea People who fight for a country just because they are paid to do so are mercenaries, and they have no problem switching sides if it serves their interests (Lex Luthor is a classic example). William Irwin
e03fcef accountable government does not come through elections. It comes through respect for law, through public spirit and through a culture of confession. To Roger Scruton
45729ec However, Pauling's interest in these carotenoids and flavonoids was confined to their chemical structures and the influence of structure on optical properties; he did not address their health functions. In 1941 Pauling was diagnosed with Bright's disease, or glomerulonephritis, which was at the time an often-fatal kidney disorder. On the advice of physicians at the Rockefeller Institute, he went to San Francisco for treatment by Thomas Addi.. Andrew W. Saul
6c641e4 LINUS PAULING WAS WRONG about megavitamins because he had made two fundamental errors. First, he had assumed that you cannot have too much of a good thing. Vitamins are critical to life. If people don't get enough vitamins, they suffer various deficiency states, like scurvy (not enough vitamin C) or rickets (not enough vitamin D). The reason that vitamins are so important is that they help convert food into energy. But there's a catch. To c.. Paul A. Offit
b1a7264 Linus Pauling famously said, "If you want a good idea, start with a lot of ideas." Tom Kelley
3a9738a At Linus Pauling's sixtieth birthday celebration, a student asked him, "Dr. Pauling, how does one go about having good ideas?" He replied, "You have a lot of ideas and throw away the bad ones." Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
b242a5b Drudgery means doing an ungrateful task for an ungrateful person - and anyone employed at the bottom of the labour market knows what that means. The Roger Scruton
9ae87ee Liberals saw political order as issuing from individual liberty; conservatives saw individual liberty as issuing from political order. What makes a political order legitimate, in the conservative view, is not the free choices that create it, but the free choices that it creates. Roger Scruton
300c726 It is one mark of rational beings that they do not live only - or even at all - in the present. They have the freedom to despise the world that surrounds them and to live in another way. Roger Scruton
5baaee6 The worst mistake in politics is the mistake made by Lenin - the mistake of destroying the institutions and procedures whereby mistakes can be recognized. Something Roger Scruton
6ead2a8 Human beings, in their settled condition, are animated by oikophilia: the love of the oikos, which means not only the home but the people contained in it, and the surrounding settlements that endow that home with lasting contours and an enduring smile.4 The oikos is the place that is not just mine and yours but ours. It is the stage-set for the first-person plural of politics, the locus, both real and imagined, where 'it all takes place'. V.. Roger Scruton
4140be6 The Arts Council exists to subsidise those artists, writers and musicians whose work is important. But how do bureaucrats decide that something is important? The culture tells them that a work is important if it is original, and the proof that a work is original is that the public doesn't like it. Besides, if the public did like it, why would it need a subsidy? Official patronage therefore inevitably favours works that are arcane, excruciat.. Roger Scruton
35f9b13 Now it seems to me that there are bad ways of loving a horse: ways that are bad for the horse, and also bad for the one who loves him. A love that regards the horse as a play-thing, whose purpose is to satisfy the whims of a rider, to be an object of cuddling and caressing of a kind that the horse himself can neither reciprocate nor understand - such a love is a way of disregarding the horse. It is also in its own way corrupt. A person who .. Roger Scruton
4b3be9f For the conservative, human beings come into this world burdened by obligations, and subject to institutions and traditions that contain within them a precious inheritance of wisdom, without which the exercise of freedom is as likely to destroy human rights and entitlements as to enhance them. Roger Scruton
570a397 Sexual desire, as it has been understood in every epoch prior to the present, is inherently compromising, and the choice to express it or to yield to it has been viewed as an existential choice, in which more is at risk than present satisfaction. Not surprisingly, therefore, the sexual act has been surrounded by prohibitions; it brings with it a weight of shame, guilt, and jealousy, as well as joy and happiness. Sex is therefore deeply impl.. Roger Scruton
de9e9fb When the Communist Party took over Eastern Europe, its first work was to destroy the civil associations that it did not control. Roger Scruton