If there is a deity of the kind imagined by votaries of the big mail-order religions such as Christianity and Islam, and if this deity is the creator of all things, then it is responsible for cancer,...
Socrates famously said that the unconsidered life is not worth living. He meant that a life lived without forethought or principle is a life so vulnerable to chance, and so dependent on the choices an...
Future generations may or may not judge Wittgenstein to be one of the great philosophers. Even if they do not, however, he is sure always to count as one of the great personalities of philosophy. From...
If there is anything worth fearing in the world, it is living in such a way that gives one cause for regret in the end.
Theistic claims that supernatural agency exists in the universe derive from ancient traditions of belief. The word 'atheist' is a theist's term for a person who does not share such beliefs. Theists th...
Yet apes are intelligent, inquisitive, affectionate and sociable, with capacities for suffering and grief that match our own, and with a grave beauty and dignity which recalls Schopenhauer’s remark th...
The best of what we are lies in what we hope to be
To lie sleepless with pain at night, or to wake every morning and feel the return of grief, yet to get up and carry on as best one can, is courage itself.
Faith is what I die for, dogma is what I kill for,’ as the saying has it; and the trouble is that all faith is based on dogma.
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope. HERMAN MELVILLE
Our repentance is not so much regret for the evil we have done as fear of what might happen to us because of it. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Along with enraged responses to Zeppelin air raids, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the use of poison gas in the trenches, these demonisations prompted outrage in the United States and other neutral...
Hatred is a sentiment that leads to the extinction of values. ORTEGA Y GASSET
For the grace of bearing life's inevitable evils is itself a
Art You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
The peak of tolerance is most readily achieved by those who are not burdened with convictions. ALEXANDER CHASE
Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. ‘Patriotism’ is its cult. ERICH FROMM
Just as dumb creatures are snared by food, human beings would not be caught unless they had a nibble of hope,’ Petronius remarked.
Hope is the worst of evils,’ Nietzsche famously said, ‘for it prolongs the torment of man.
As Ruskin said, it is not what we get but what we become by our endeavours that makes them worthwhile.