philosophy

"Suppose no one asked a question, what would be the answer."

"Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion."

"Ahab makes a great impression on his first appearance in Moby Dick... And if either by birth or by circumstance something pathological was at work deep in his nature, this did not detract from his dra…"

"Ecological rationality uses reason – rational reconstruction – to examine the behavior of individuals based on their experience and folk knowledge, who are ‘naïve’ in their ability to apply constructi…"

"I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word "moral" to mean something else, but I do not think any…"

"Divinity reveals herself in all things... everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings, and from the smallest beings, according to th…"

"The Greeks distinguished between good and bad behavior, language that enhanced or diminished persons. Being intoxicated with scientism, we fail to recognize that the seemingly technical terms used to …"

"This book... is primarily and essentially an account of the discovery or invention of mathematical concepts, and the historical material is... divided and classified, neither chronologically nor biogr…"

"Most, if not all, of the great ideas of modern mathematics have had their origin in observation. Take, for instance, the arithmetical theory of forms, of which the foundation was laid in the diophanti…"

"Determinism, in the strict sense, is self-contradictory. For if man’s mental processes—specifically, his attempts at reasoning—are not free, if they are determined by environment and heredity, then th…"

"However—the crucial thing is my lack of interest in ordinary life. No one ever wrote a story yet without some real emotional drive behind it—and I have not that drive except where violations of the na…"

"I guess I can't, or my subconscious can't, even imagine a warless world. The best it can do is substitute one kind of war for another. You said, no killing of humans by other humans. So I dreamed up t…"

"American constitutional law is, in many ways, grounded in British common law... there are two types of "persons": "natural persons," like you and me, and "artificial persons," which include government…"

"Just stick with it. Just stick with it. There's always a reason why you keep going in the direction you chose to go in."

"A community of vices is a closer and more direct bond between human beings than a community of virtues."

"Being a good administrator and a bad politician, Pombal was not always a happy legislator."

"“In other words, the conception is a philosophical and real account of the nature of an isolated human being, or created spirit, the numerical unit in the created universe, viewed as such a spirit app…"

"God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowelless being of the Testaments - the vehement glorymonger, with His bag of cheap carny tricks and his booming voice - the fiery huckster with his burning b…"

"The irony was that if Dad was bipolar—or had any of a dozen disorders that might explain his behavior—the same paranoia that was a symptom of the illness would prevent its ever being diagnosed and tre…"

"When I was informed by the police they had decided to charge me with treason ... I was in a state of shock. That I have been found guilty of treason shocks me the more."