“Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up "What's that?" - It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said: this is a man, this is a house, etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then?”
― Culture and Value
― Culture and Value
“It is easiest to tell what transubstantiation is by saying this: little children should be taught about it as early as possible. Not, of course, using the word 'transubstantiation', because it is not a little child's word. But the thing can be taught, and it is best taught at mass at the consecration, the one part where a small child should be got to fix its attention on what is going on.”
― Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on Religion, Philosophy and Ethics
― Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on Religion, Philosophy and Ethics
“Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different. I was thinking of using as a motto for my book a quotation from King Lear: 'I’ll teach you differences'.
...
'You’d be surprised' wouldn’t be a bad motto either.”
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...
'You’d be surprised' wouldn’t be a bad motto either.”
―
“The high success of Newton's astronomy was in one way an intellectual disaster: it produced an illusion from which we tend still to suffer. This illusion was created by the circumstance that Newton's mechanics had a good model in the solar system. For this gave the impression that we had an ideal of scientific explanation; whereas the truth was, it was mere obligingness on the part of the solar system, by having had so peaceful a history in recorded time, to provide such a model.”
― Collected Philosophical Papers, Volume 2: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind
― Collected Philosophical Papers, Volume 2: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind
“What ways are there of getting human beings to do things? You can make a man fall over by pushing him; you cannot usefully make his hand write a letter or mix concrete by pushing; for in general if you have to push his hand in the right way, you might as well not use him at all. You can order him to do what you want, and if you have authority he will perhaps obey you. Again if you have power to hurt him or help him according as he disregards or obeys your orders, or if he loves you so as to accord with your requests, you have a way of getting him to do things. However, few people have authority over everyone they need to get to do things, and few people either have power to hurt or help others without damage to themselves or command affection from others to such an extent as to be able to get them to do the things they need others to do. Those who have extensive authority and power cannot exercise it to get all the other people to do the things that meet their mutual requirements. So though physical force seems a more certain way of producing desired physical results than any other, and authority and power to hurt or help and sometimes affection too, more potent than the feeble procedure of a language-game as the one with 'Bump!' that I described, yet in default of the possibility or utility of exerting physical force, and of the possibility of exercising authority or power to hurt and help, or of commanding affection, this feeble means is at least a means of getting people to do things. Now getting one another to do things without the application of physical force is a necessity for human life, and that far beyond what could be secured by those other means.”
― The collected philosophical papers of G.E.M. Anscombe
― The collected philosophical papers of G.E.M. Anscombe
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