Quotes

Liberty therefore not being more fit than other words in some of the instances in which it has been used, and not so fit in others, the less the use that is made of it the better. I would no more use the word liberty in my conversation when I could get another that would answer the purpose, than I would brandy in my diet, if my physician did not order me: both cloud the understanding and inflame the passions.

Jeremy Bentham, quoted in P. J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and distributive justice: Jeremy Bentham and the civil law, Oxford : New York, 1990, p. 96

When I eat my dinner I don’t do it to the greater glory of God; I do it because I enjoy it. The world’s full of amusing things—books, wine, travel, friends—everything. I’ve never seen any meaning in it all, and I don’t want to see one. Why not take life as you find it?

George Orwell, A clergyman's daughter, San Diego, 1935

Had Mother Nature been a real parent, she would have been in jail for child abuse and murder.

Nick Bostrom, In defense of posthuman dignity, Bioethics, vol. 19, no. 3, 2005, pp. 202–214, p. 211

Natural selection commensurates the incommensurables.

Garrett Hardin, The tragedy of the commons, Science, vol. 162, no. 3859, 1968, pp. 1243–48, pp. 1243-1248

[Y]o tengo la impresión de que casi todo el mundo ahora vive, bueno, como si no vieran; que hay como una… no sé, se han abotagado los sentidos, ¿no? Tengo esa impresión, ¿eh? […] [de que] no sienten las cosas; la gente vive de oídas, sobre todo, repiten fórmulas pero no tratan de imaginarlas; tampoco sacan conclusiones de ellas. Parece que se viviera así, recibiendo, pero recibiendo de un modo superficial; es como si casi nadie pensara, como si el razonamiento fuera un hábito que los hombres están perdiendo.

Jorge Luis Borges, Reencuentro: Diálogos inéditos, Buenos Aires, 1999, pp. 104-105

["]Meine Wohnung reicht nur bis zu dem Striche", sagte der Alte, wobei er auf die Kreidelinie in der Mitte des Zimmers zeigte. “Dort drüben wohnen zwei Handwerksgesellen.” - “Und respektieren diese Ihre Bezeichnung?” - “Sie nicht, aber ich”, sagte er. “Nur die Türe ist gemeinschaftlich.” - “Und werden Sie nicht gestört von Ihrer Nachbarschaft?” - “Kaum”, meinte er. “Sie kommen des Nachts spät nach Hause, und wenn sie mich da auch ein wenig im Bette aufschrecken, so ist dafür die Lust des Wiedereinschlafens um so größer.”

Franz Grillparzer, Die arme Spielmann, 1848

Every test of a theory, whether resulting in its corroboration or falsification, must stop at some basic statement or other which we decide to accept. If we do not come to any decision, and do not accept some basic statement or other, then the test will have led nowhere. But considered from a logical point of view, the situation is never such that it compels us to stop at this particular basic statement rather than at that, or else give up the test altogether. For any basic statement can again in its turn be subjected to test, using as a touchstone any of the basic statements which can be deduced from it with the help of some theory, either the one under test, or another. This procedure has no natural end. Thus if the test is to lead us anywhere, nothing remains but to stop at some point or other and say that we are satisfied, for the time being.

It is fairly easy to see that we arrive in this way at a procedure according to which we stop only at a kind of statement that is especially easy to test. For it means that we are stopping at statements about whose acceptance or rejection the various investigators are likely to reach agreement. And if they do not agree, they will simply continue with the tests, or else start them all over again. If this too lead to no result, then we might say that the statements in question were not inter-subjectively testable, or that we were not, after all dealing with observable events. If some day it should no longer be possible for scientific observers to reach agreement about basic statements this would amount to a failure of language as a means of universal communication. It would amount to a new ‘Babel of Tongues’: scientific discovery would be reduced to absurdity. In this new Babel, the soaring edifice of science would soon lie in ruins.

Karl R. Popper, The logic of scientific discovery, London, 2008, p. 104

[M]orality is an inevitable corollary of evolutionarily useful intelligence: in becoming rational animals human beings, eo ipso, became creatures endowed with moral sense. It is important to this explanation that practical rationality be inseparable from susceptibility to moral requirements; for if it were possible to possess the one faculty without the other, then evolution could afford to dispense with morality while retaining reason. But I think that the Kantian thesis is right that rationality implies moral sense. If they are thus inseparable, then the price of eliminating morality from a species would be the elimination of (advanced) rationality from it; and, given the advantages of the latter, the price is too great.

Colin McGinn, Evolution, Animals and the Basis of Morality, Inquiry, vol. 22, no. 1, 1979, pp. 93, p. 93

A man who wholeheartedly accepts a [moral] rule is likely to live, not merely talk, differently from one who does not.

R. M. Hare, Freedom and reason, Oxford, 1963, p. 23

Excuse me? Use your eyes and years. When CNN stands for the Chomsky News Network, we can resume this discussion.

Bob Harris, Steal this book and get life without parole, Monroe, ME, 1999, p. 8

En el ‘84 me tocaba jugar con él [Miguel Najdorf] en Mar del Plata y estaba preocupado.

—Esta noche juego con el Viejo ¿qué hago?—le comenté a Szmetan.

—Si aguantás hasta la quinta hora podés zafar.

Efectivamente en la quinta hora él se equivocó y fue tablas. Desde afuera Szmetan me señaló que el Viejo tenía la partida ganada. Se la mostré.

—A ver cómo es—lme preguntó.

Cuando la vio me dijo:

—Yo sabía que vos eras un chambón.

Ese día cumplía 74 años y Clarín le mandó a Mar del Plata una torta que era un tablero de ajedrez hecho en chocolate blanco y marrón con las piezas blancas y negras dispuestas en la posición de la Variante Najdorf. Vino el intendente, Ángel Roig, y se ubicó al lado de él junto a la torta. Yo estaba sentado en la otra punta y el Viejo le explicaba la partida. A cada rato gritaba:

—Scalise ¿no es cierto que te ganaba?

—Sí, don Miguel.

—Mire, le voy a mostrar—le dijo al intendente. Agarró las piezas de la torta y puso la posición en el tablero. Pero se quedó con un montón de chocolate en la mano y no podía mover. Entonces se metió el chocolate en la boca, y le dijo “mire, mire” mientras el chocolate le chorreaba por la cara, Rita se acercaba con una servilleta para limpiarlo y él la echaba, “salí”. El intendente estaba mudo y sin saber qué hacer. Miró la torta y con una cucharita empezó a comerla.

Luis Scalise, NAJDORF x najdorf, Buenos Aires, 1999, pp. 197-198

In systems of law that are intended to be taken seriously, coerced acquiescence is invalid. In international affairs, however, it is honoured as diplomacy.

Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or survival: America's quest for global dominance, New York, 2003, p. 36

Jorge Luis Borges, El hacedor, Madrid, 1960

If the propaganda model suggests that modern society will be flooded by a version of reality closely conforming to the requirements of state and corporate interests, then it is essentially suggesting that modern society will be flooded by a necessarily irrational version of reality. It comes as no surprise, then, to find that modern society takes a hostile position to the very existence of truth itself; if inconvenient ideas are dismissed as ridiculous, or ignored through an absence of comment, then so too will the search for truth itself. Today all truth is deemed to be relative. Any discussion of truth is made out to be a metaphysical concern, and the conventional wisdom is that anyone talking in terms of wanting to discover the truth is somewhat unsophisticated. This modern relativism is based on the extraordinary notion that all truth is somehow a matter of opinion and that it is not possible to determine, for example, what is good and bad for people, because everyone is different. Again, this involves a fantastic distortion of the scientific method (which accepts the impossibility of absolute certainty, but operates on the assumption that a good hypothesis is often adequate to the task).

David Edwards, Burning all illusions: a guide to personal and political freedom, Boston, MA, 1996, p. 55

I think every big town should contain artificial waterfalls that people could descend in very fragile canoes, and they should contain bathing pools full of mechanical sharks. Any person found advocating a preventive war should be condemned to two hours a day with these ingenious monsters.

Bertrand Russell, Nobel Lecture, 1950

[Retributivism is] a mysterious piece of moral alchemy, in which the two evils of moral wickedness and suffering are transmuted into good.

H.L.A. Hart and John Gardner, Punishment and Responsibility, 1968, pp. 234-235

Expon con sinceridad y sencillez tu sentir y deja que la verdad obre por sí sobre la mente de tu hermano; que le gane ella, y no que le sojuzgues tú. La verdad que profieras no es tuya; está sobre ti, y se basta á sí misma.

Miguel de Unamuno, Diario íntimo, Madrid, 2001, p. 37

My dear sirs, what we want to know from you as ethical teachers, is not how people use a word; it is not even, what kind of actions they approve, which the use of this word ‘good’ may certainly imply: what we want to know is simply what is good.

G. E. Moore, Principia ethica, Cambridge, 1903, p. 1

To put a situation into a film simply because you yourself can vouch for its authenticity, either because you’ve experienced it or because you’ve hear of it, simply isn’t good enough. You may feel sure of yourself because you can always say, “This is true, I’ve seen it.” You can argue as much as you like, but the public or critics still won’t accept it. So we have to go along with the idea that truth is stranger than fiction.

François Truffaut et al., Mr. Hitchcock, wie haben Sie das gemacht?, München, 1985, p. 203

According to this theory, sleep was probably “invented” some two hundred million years ago when sea creatures crawled up on the shore. Land dwellers developed the habit of sleeping as a safety measure. During the day they had to be alert and ready to run away from danger. At night they couldn’t be seen, but they could be heard, so the best thing to do was to stay still and quiet and out of the way. The rest would help them to run faster and farther the next day, and while they were resting they also ensured their inconspicuousness by staying asleep.

Everett B. Mattlin, Sleep less, live more, New York, 1979, p. 67-68