Quotes

La sociedad de nuestros días conoce tan bien como la de Séneca a esos hombres fofos, vacíos por dentro, hueros de ideas, incapaces de esfuerzo, que viven de la obra colectiva, repitiendo como un eco palabras o consignas, que a veces ni entienden ni tratan de hacer suyas. Pululan por todas partes, tratan de imponer su voluntad, parece que dirigen a los demás y en realidad no son más que juguetes del destino, que los derriba tan arbitrariamente como los encontró y deja ver, cuando ya están humillados y hechos polvo, que su pretendida grandeza no era más que una vana apariencia sin consistencia y sin realidad.

José Gallegos Rocafull, Introducción, Cartas morales, vol. 1, 1951, pp. xi-xii

Mumon, The Gateless Gate, in Paul Reps and Senzaki Nyogen (eds.) Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, Boston, 1994, pp. 194-195

The most promising finding [of this approach] is that if the facts of Cooperation Theory are known by participants with foresight, the evolution of cooperation can be speeded up.

Robert Axelrod, The evolution of cooperation, New York, 1984, p. 24

Se puede observar que se ha incurrido en lo que algunos llaman “el angelismo racionalista”, por el cual se tiene la convicción de que el poder de las normas es suficiente para revertir conductas sociales.

Daniel Alberto Sabsay and José Miguel Onaindia, La constitución de los argentinos: análisis y comentario de su texto luego de la reforma de 1994: incluye comentarios a las leyes 24430 y 24444 y al decreto 977/95 y jurispurdencia posterior a la reforma, Buenos Aires, 1994, p. 130

Wenn diese Arbeit einen Wert hat, so besteht er in Zweierlei. Erstens darin, dass in ihr Gedanken ausgedrückt sind, und dieser Wert wird umso grösser sein, je besser die Gedanken ausgedrückt sind. Je mehr der Nagel auf den Kopf getroffen ist. - Hier bin ich mir bewusst, weit hinter dem Möglichen zurückgeblieben zu sein. Einfach darum, weil meine Kraft zur Bewältigung der Aufgabe zu gering ist. - Mögen andere kommen und es besser machen.

Dagegen scheint mir die Warheit der hier mitgeteilten Gedanken unantasbar ist un definitiv. Ich bin also der Meinung, die Probleme im Wesentlichen endgültig gelöst zu haben. Und wenn ich mich hierin nicht irre, so besteht nun der Wert dieser Arbeit zeitens darin, dass sie zeigt, wie wening damit getan ist, dass die Probleme gelöst sind.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus

In very general questions […] the difficulty often lies with the unclarity of a question and not with the impossibility of an answer: once again, to have a clear answer we must first have a clear question.

John Hospers, An introduction to philosophical analysis, Upper Saddle River, N.J, 1953, p. 13

Do we really think what we are currently confronted with is worth protecting with some creative obscurantism? Do we think, for instance, that vast resources should be set aside to preserve the imaginary prospects of a renewed mental life for deeply comatose people, while there are no resources to spare to enhance the desperate, but far from imaginary, expectations of the poor? Myths about the sanctity of life, or of consciousness, cut both ways. They may be useful in erecting barriers (against euthanasia, against capital punishment, against abortion, against eating meat) to impress the unimaginative, but at the price of offensive hypocrisy or ridiculous self-deception among the more enlightened.

Daniel C. Dennett, Précis of Consciousness Explained, Philosophy and phenomenological research, vol. 53, no. 4, 1993, pp. 889–892, p. 454

When a Benjamin Franklin or a Jeremy Bentham suggested that we look at animals in a radically different way, the suggestion was probably greeted not with a refutation but with a laugh or sneer. Until animals are taken seriously enough that this possibility is clearly in mind, intelligent discussion of the reasons for and against equal consideration is impossible.

David DeGrazia, Taking animals seriously: mental life and moral status, Cambridge ; New York, 1996, p. 49

Those retributive theories that hold the punishment somehow should match the crime face a dilemma: either punishment fails to match the wrongness of the crime and so doesn’t retribute fully, or it matches the wrongness of the crime and so is unjustified.

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, state, and utopia, Oxford, 1974, p. 60

Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kömmt darauf an, sie zu verändern.

Karl Marx, Thesen über Feuerbach, Harmondsworth, 1845

I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other, I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.

Oscar Wilde, quoted in Oscar Wilde, Dinners and dishes, The Pall Mall Gazette, vol. 41, no. 6236, 1885, pp. 5, p. 31

Nimirum leges, ut ait Cicero, iniqua tollunt quatenus teneri manu possunt, philosophi quatenus ratione et intelligentia. Hi vero qui legibus civilibus subiecti non sunt, id sequi debent quod aequum esse ipsis ratio recta dictat.

Hugo Grotius, Francis W. Kelsey, and Hugo Grotius, Hugonis Grotii De jure belli ac pacis libri tres: in quibus jus naturae & gentium, item juris publici praecipua explicantur: editio nova, cum annotatis auctoris, ex postrema ejus ante obitum cura multo nunc auctior: accesserunt & Annotata in Epistolam Pauli ad Philemonem, Buffalo, N.Y, 1625, p. 12

Mill held […] that persecution was usually successful if it was tried for a reasonable length of time, and that it only failed where the numbers of the persecuted were so great that the policy could not be kept up for long. The Roman persecutors of Christianity might easily have succeeded in stamping out that faith altogether—a claim to which some reviewers took exception on the grounds that it suggested that God might have chosen to desert his revelation[.]

Alan Ryan, J.S. Mill, London, 1974, p. 137

Borges es de una inteligencia deslumbrante, enmascarada por un aire tímido, de ademanes inseguros. Su erudición atrae, pero me parece frívolo detenerse en ella, ya sea para admirarla o para censurar su abuso.

Alicia Jurado, Genio y figura de Jorge Luis Borges, Buenos Aires, 1980, p. 23

The Law is no man’s enemy: the Law is no man’s rival. Ask the clamorous and unruly multitude –-it is never the Law itself that is in the wrong: it is always some wicked interpreter of the Law that has corrupted and abused it.

Jeremy Bentham, The collected works of Jeremy Bentham: A comment on the commentaries and A fragment on goverment, Oxford, 1977

Excepto los vegetarianos y dispépticos, nadie tiene prejuicios de raza en la comida. La mesa suele ser un programa de extrema izquierda. Se come de todo, sin discernimiento, pero no en cualquier parte ni a cualquier hora.

Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, La cabeza de Goliat: microscopía de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, 1940, p. 114

Lay off with the ‘You reason, so you don’t feel’ stuff, please. I feel, but I also think about what I feel. When people say we should only feel […] I am reminded of Göring, who said ‘I think with my blood.’ See where it led him.

Peter Singer, Reflections, in J. M. Coetzee and Amy Gutmann (eds.) The Lives of Animals, Princeton, 1999, p. 89

What magic is there in the pronoun ‘my,’ to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth?

William Godwin and Isaac Kramnick, Enquiry concerning political justice, and its influence on modern morals and happiness, Harmondsworth ; Baltimore, 1793, p. 2

Take any demand, however slight, which any creature, however weak, may make. Ought it not, for its own sake be satisfied? If not, prove why not.

William James, Essays in pragmatism, New York, 1970, p. 73

Obras completas. 2: 1952 - 1972, Barcelona, 1989, p. 263