"Thoughts are strange things. they have 'representational' powers: a thought typically represents the world as being one way or another. A sensation, by contrast, seems to just sit there."

Simon Blackburn Philosophy See all quotes by Simon Blackburn →

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“In Michigan recently a man won a lawsuit for substantial damages because, he claimed, a rear-end collision in his car had made him a homosexual.”

“But if nothing does as well as something about which nothing can be said, it vanishes.”

“Why should thinkers mock the simple pieties of the people?”

“Chance is as relentless as necessity.”

“Myself, I have never seen a bumper sticker saying "Hate if you Love Jesus", but I sometimes wonder why not. It would be a good slogan for the religious Right.”

“If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma, are sometimes consoling.”

Resonant Thoughts

"I agree with you likewise in your wishes to keep religion and government independent of each Other. Were it possible for St. Paul to rise from his grave at the present juncture, he would say to the Cl…"

— Benjamin Rush

Social Activism1746–1813

#justice

"The Christian theologian will never find a contradiction between the propositions of faith and reason, because it is his job to interpret them out of existence."

— George H. Smith

Education1949–2022

#philosophy

"Another conspicuous failure of classical mechanics was with one aspect of the problem of radiation. ...Imagine a crowd of steel balls rolling about on a steel floor. ...There must... be a steady leaka…"

— James Jeans

Science1877–1946

#friendship

"I cannot write anything that I understand too well. If I know what something means to me, if I have already come to the end of it as an experience, I can't write it because it seems a twice-told tale.…"

— Arthur Miller

Literature1915–2005

#knowledge