A Little History of Philosophy Quotes

“A human being can choose what to do, what to become. We are all free. No one but you can decide what you make of your life. If you let other people decide how you live, that is, again, a choice. It would be a choice to be the kind of person other people expect you to be.
Obviously if you make a choice to do something, you might not always succeed in doing it. And the reasons why you don't succeed may be completely outside your control. But you are responsible for wanting to do that thing, for trying to do it, and for how you respond to your failure to be able to do it.
Freedom is hard to handle and many of us run away from it. One of the ways to hide is to pretend that you aren't really free at all. If Sartre is right, we can't make excuses: we are completely responsibile for what we do every day and how we feel about what we do. Right down to the emotions we have. If you're sad right now, that's your choice, according to Sartre. You don't have to be sad. If you are sad, you are responsible for it. That is frightening and some people would rather not face up to it because it is so painful. He talks about us being 'condemned to be free'. We're stuck with this freedom whether we like it or not.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“The best way to live, then, was this: have a very simple lifestyle, be kind to those around you, and surround yourself with friends.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Socrates

“Life, he declared, is only worth living if you think about what you are doing. An unexamined existence is all right for cattle, but not for human beings.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“The problem as he saw it was not how short our lives are, but rather how badly most of us use what time we have.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“If you do something just because of how you feel that is not a good action at all.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“We are all basically selfish, driven by fear of death and the hope of personal gain,”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Sartre explained what he meant by the anguish of choice through the true story of a student who had come to ask his advice during the war. This young man had to make a very difficult decision. He could either stay at home to look after his mother; or he could run off and try to join the French Resistance and fight to save his country from the Germans. This was the most difficult decision of his life and he wasn't sure what to do. If he left his mother, she would be vulnerable without him. He might not succeed in getting to the Resistance fighters before being caught by the Germans, and then the whole attempt to do something noble would be a waste of energy and of a life. But if he stayed at home with his mother, he'd be letting others do the fighting for him. What should he do? What would you do? What advice would you give him? Sartre's advice was a bit frustrating. He told the student that he was free and that he should choose for himself. If Sartre had given the student any practical advice about what to do, the student would still have had to decide whether or not to follow it. There is no way to escape the weight of responsibility that comes with being human.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Pyrrho

“You shouldn’t rely on what you believe to be true. You might be mistaken. Everything can be questioned, everything doubted. The best option, then, is to keep an open mind. Don’t commit, and you won’t be disappointed.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“As soon as you start to doubt your own existence, the act of doubting proves that you exist as a thinking thing. This”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Instead of looking to increase our pleasure in life, they think, we should try to become better people and do the right thing. That is what makes a life go well.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Kierkegaard was a Christian, though he hated the Danish Church and couldn't accept the way complacent Christians around him behaved. For him, religion was a heart-wrenching option, not a cosy excuse for a song in church.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“the mind shaping reality just is reality. There is nothing beyond it. But this did not mean that reality remained in a fixed state. For Hegel, everything is in a process of change, and that change takes the form of a gradual increase in self-awareness, our state of self-awareness being fixed by the period in which we live.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Machiavelli stresses that it's better as a leader to be feared than to be loved. Ideally you would be both loved and feared, but that's hard to achieve. If you rely on your people loving you, then you risk them abandoning you when times get tough. If they fear you, they will be too scared to betray you. This is part of his cynicism, his low view of human nature. He thought that human beings were unreliable, greedy and dishonest. If you are to be a successful ruler, then you need to know this. It's dangerous to trust anyone to keep their promises unless they are terrified of the consequences of not keeping them. If”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“In Hobbes' memorable description, life outside society would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Alguém que iça as velas de um barco e assim se deixa levar pelas tempestades não esteve numa viagem; apenas foi jogado de um lado para o outro. O mesmo acontece com a vida. Estar fora de controle, ser carregado pelos acontecimentos sem ter tempo para as experiências mais valiosas e significativas, é bem diferente de viver verdadeiramente.”
― Nigel Warburton, Uma breve história da filosofia

“Those who do the right thing don't do it simply because of how they feel: the decision has to be based on reason, reason that tells you what your duty is, regardless of how you happen to feel.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Everything we perceive takes place in time and space, and every change has a cause. But according to Kant, that is not because of the way reality ultimately is: it is a contribution of our minds. We don't have direct access to the way the world is. Nor can we ever take the glasses off and see things as they truly are. We're stuck with this filter and without it we would be completely unable to experience anything. All we can do is recognize that it is there and understand how it affects and colours what we experience.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“The message is that riches, power and honour are worthless since they can come and go. No one should base their happiness on such fragile foundations. Happiness has to come from something that is more solid, something that can't be taken away. As Boethius believed that he would continue to live after death, seeking happiness in trivial worldly things was a mistake.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“But the basis of Freud's ideas aren't accepted by all philosophers, though many accept that he was right about the possibility of unconscious thought. Some have claimed that Freud's theories are unscientific. Most famously, Karl Popper (whose ideas are more fully discussed in Chapter 36) described many of the ideas of psychoanalysis as ‘unfalsifiable’. This wasn't a compliment, but a criticism. For Popper, the essence of scientific research was that it could be tested; that is, there could be some possible observation that would show that it was false. In Popper's example, the actions of a man who pushed a child into a river, and a man who dived in to save a drowning child were, like all human behaviour, equally open to Freudian explanation. Whether someone tried to drown or save a child, Freud's theory could explain it. He would probably say that the first man was repressing some aspect of his Oedipal conflict, and that led to his violent behaviour, whereas the second man had ‘sublimated’ his unconscious desires, that is, managed to steer them into socially useful actions. If every possible observation is taken as further evidence that the theory is true, whatever that observation is, and no imaginable evidence could show that it was false, Popper believed, the theory couldn't be scientific at all. Freud, on the other hand, might have argued that Popper had some kind of repressed desire that made him so aggressive towards psychoanalysis. Bertrand”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“If Abraham had gone ahead and killed his son he would have done something morally wrong. A father has a basic duty to look after his son, and certainly shouldn't tie him to an altar and cut his throat in a religious ritual. What God asked Abraham to do was to ignore morality and make a leap of faith. In the Bible Abraham is presented as admirable for ignoring this normal sense of right and wrong and being ready to sacrifice Isaac. But couldn't he have made a terrible mistake? What if the message wasn't really from God? Perhaps it was a hallucination; perhaps Abraham was insane and hearing voices. How could he know for sure? If he had known in advance that God wouldn't follow through on his command, it would have been easy for Abraham. But as he raised that knife ready to shed his son's blood, he really believed that he was going to kill him. That, as the Bible describes the scene, is the point. His faith is so impressive because he put his trust in God rather than in conventional ethical considerations. It wouldn't have been faith otherwise. Faith involves risk. But it is also irrational: not based on reason. Kierkegaard”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“In this short philosophical novel he completely undermined the kind of optimism about humanity and the universe that Pope and Leibniz had expressed, and he did it in such an entertaining way that the book became an instant bestseller. Wisely Voltaire left his name off the title page, otherwise its publication would have landed him in prison again for making fun of religious beliefs. Candide is the central character. His name suggests innocence and purity. At the start of the book, he is a young servant who falls hopelessly in love with his master's daughter, Cunégonde, but is chased out of her father's castle when he is caught in a compromising position with her. From then on, in a fast-moving and often fantastical tale, he travels through real and imaginary countries with his philosophy tutor Dr Pangloss, until he finally meets up with his lost love Cunégonde again, though by now she is old and ugly. In a series of comical episodes Candide and Pangloss witness terrible events and encounter a range of characters along the way, all of whom have themselves suffered terrible misfortunes. Voltaire uses the philosophy tutor, Pangloss, to spout a caricatured version of Leibniz's philosophy, which the writer then pokes fun at. Whatever happens, whether it is a natural disaster, torture, war, rape, religious persecution or slavery, Pangloss treats it as further confirmation that they live in the best of all possible worlds. Rather than causing him to rethink his beliefs, each disaster just increases his confidence that everything is for the best and this is how things had to be to produce the most perfect situation. Voltaire takes great delight in revealing Pangloss' refusal to see what is in front of him, and this is meant to mock Leibniz's optimism. But to be fair to Leibniz, his point wasn't that evil doesn't occur, but rather that the evil that does exist was needed to bring about the best possible world. It does, however, suggest that there is so much evil in the world that it is hardly likely that Leibniz was right – this can't be the minimum needed to achieve a good result. There is just too much pain and suffering in the world for that to be true. In”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“One way of approaching the question about what makes a human being the same person over time would be to point out that we are living things. You are the same individual animal that you were as a baby. Locke used the word ‘man’ (meaning by that ‘man or woman’) to refer to the ‘human animal’. He thought it was true to say that over a life each of us remains the same ‘man’ in that sense. There is a continuity of the living human being that develops in the course of its life. But for Locke being the same ‘man’ was very different from being the same person. According to Locke, I could be the same ‘man’, but not the same person I was previously. How could that be? What makes us the same person over time, Locke claimed, is our consciousness, our awareness of our own selves. What you can't remember isn't part of you as a person. To illustrate this he imagined a prince waking up with a cobbler's memories; and a cobbler with a prince's memories. The prince wakes up as usual in his palace, and to outside appearances is the same person he was when he went to sleep. But because he has the cobbler's memories instead of his own, he feels that he is the cobbler. Locke's point was that the prince is right to feel that he is the cobbler. Bodily continuity doesn't decide the issue. What matters in questions about personal identity is psychological continuity. If you have the prince's memories, then you are the prince. If you have the cobbler's memories, you are the cobbler, even if you have the body of a prince. If the cobbler had committed a crime, it would be the one with the prince's body that we should hold responsible for it. Of”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Epicurus summed up his whole philosophy in his epitaph: ‘I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind’ If”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Marx's main interest was in economic relationships since in his view they shape everything that we are and can become.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd: I am always about in the Quad.     And that's why the tree     Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“There once was a man who said ‘God Must think it exceedingly odd     If he finds that this tree     Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Whether or not you can imagine your own death, it seems quite natural to be at least a bit afraid of not existing.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“wisdom and understanding in the course of human history will only come fully at a late stage, when we're looking back on what has already happened, like someone looking back on the events of a day as night falls.”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy

“Farm animals aren't the only ones that suffer at the hands of human beings. Scientists use animals for their research. It's not just rats and guinea pigs – cats, dogs, monkeys and even chimpanzees can be found in laboratories, many of them suffering pain and distress as they are drugged or given electric shocks. Singer's test to see if any research is morally acceptable is this: would we be prepared to perform the same experiment on a brain-damaged human being? If not, he believes, it is not right to perform the experiment on an animal with a similar level of mental awareness. This is a tough test, and not many experiments would pass it. In practice, then, Singer is very strongly against using animals in research. The”
― Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy