Mary Midgley

"It would be quite false to say that competition is the only relation that obtains between species. Mutual dependence is in general quite as important. Each kind exists within an ecosystem, and needs t…"

"Arguments can always be answered. Moral philosophy, unlike straight moralizing, arises from and trives on plurality of values."

"The future will not "be with" anybody in the sense of falling to them as a conquest. The need for many different methods is not going to go away, dissolved in a quasi-physical heaven where all serious…"

"People did not proceed, as the theory of evolution really requires by demythologizing their symbolism about animals and the downward direction. Instead they resisted evolution at all costs, or accepte…"

"Philosophy, like speaking prose, is something have to do all our lives, well or badly, whether we notice it or not."

"Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not wishes for survival or for means-to-survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while su…"

"Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started."

"But my present point is a much wider one. What we need, in order to feel at home in the world, is certainly not a belief that it was made for us. We are at home in this world because we were made for …"