Contemporary moral philosophy has found an original way of being boring, which is by not discussing moral issues at all.
— Bernard Williams
The truth is that we all have to do more things than we can rightly do, if we are to do anything at all.
The people I really do dislike are the morally unimaginative kind of evolutionary reductionists who, in the name of science, think they can explain everything in terms of our early hominid ancestors or our genes, with their combination of high-handed tone and disregard for history. Such reductive speculation encourages a really empty scientism.
If there's one theme in all my work, it's about authenticity and self-expression. It's the idea that some things are, in some real sense, really you - or express what you and others aren't.
Philosophy is altogether less pure now. It's been impurified by science and social science and history.
People who say, 'Let the chips fall where they may,' usually figure they will not be hit by a chip.
What a strange world this would be if we all had the same sense of humor.
Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.
Few things are as democratic as a snowstorm.
Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
Disagreement does not necessarily have to be overcome. It may remain an important and constitutive feature of our relations to others and also be seen as something that is merely to be expected in the light of the best explanations we have of how such disagreement arises.
'Humanity' is a name not merely for a species but also for a quality.
I was attracted to opera when I was 15 or 16. A very rich man in England bankrupted himself to put on a lot of opera during the war, but he converted a lot of people, myself included, in the process.
Virtually the only subject in which one could ever get a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge was classics. So I went to Oxford to study classics and, unlike Cambridge, it had a philosophy component, and I became completely transported by it.
People who express themselves in paradoxes are in a strong position; and the more outrageous the paradox, in general the stronger the position.
We grow a little every time we do not take advantage of somebody's weakness.
There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.
A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.
Women have a favorite room, men a favorite chair.
We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory.
Books had instant replay long before televised sports.
Tragedy is formed 'round ideas it does not expound, and to understand its history is, in some part, to understand those ideas and their place in the society that produced it.
People have been predicting the death of philosophy since the 17th century. When I was a student, people were saying, 'We're in the last days of philosophy.' Then we were told in the '60s it would be replaced by sociology, then by literary criticism.
The majority of philosophers are totally humorless. That's part of their trouble.
I was interested in philosophy before I knew I was. That's to say, when I was at school, I used to argue with my friends about issues that turned out to be philosophical ones of some kind.
Life is supposed to be a series of peaks and valleys. The secret is to keep the valleys from becoming Grand Canyons.
The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.
An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity.
A half-truth is usually less than half of that.
If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance.
I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy.
