Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It Quotes

“if you are a skeptical philosopher who subjects everything to a strict test of reason, God is only one of many things that don’t make the grade. A philosopher engaged in radical doubt ends up with only sense data and the rules of logic on the table—or rather, on that configuration of sense data that we call a “table.” But that’s all, folks. Gone with God are also all moral principles; in the end there is no rational way to prove that any action is good or bad, so off the table morality should go, too. Ultimately, we take our belief in good and evil on faith, pretty much the same way some people take their belief in God. So the question is: Are we willing to throw out our faith in morality along with our faith in God? After all, one is as irrational as the other. And if not—if we are willing to make an exception to our faith-scuttling in the case of moral principles—why exactly don’t we also make an exception in the case of the existence of God?”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Aristotle famously said, “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know,”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Sam Harris, the late Christopher Hitchens, and the contemporary British philosopher Richard Dawkins composed what one wag calls the Holy Trinity of the New Atheism.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“There is no God and Mary is his mother.” —GEORGE SANTAYANA, AMERICAN-SPANISH PHILOSOPHER
(1863–1952), AMERICAN PRAGMATIST (SORT OF)”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“In the past hundred years, since Logical Positivists like Bertrand Russell and A. J. Ayer have argued that the idea of a rational basis for ethics is as impossible as a rational basis for the existence of God—or of the Tooth Fairy,”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“our memories of our experiences, including memories of past thoughts and feelings, are also a matter of degree. They are on a scale of weak to strong. So it seems reasonable to say that our weak memories constitute less of our personal identity than do our strong memories. Likewise, our convictions and tastes. In short, it is an illusion to think of identity as a static, absolute phenomenon as we usually do because ultimately identity is a matter of degree—it’s all relative. When my wife says to me, “You aren’t the man I married,” Parfit would say that she is on to something. At some point, in fact, if I became more Garbo than Danny, she would definitely have legitimate grounds for leaving me—well, not exactly leaving me.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Greene: “It’s not reasonable to expect actual humans to put aside nearly everything they love for the sake of the greater good. Speaking for myself, I spend money on my children that would be better spent on distant starving children, and I have no intention of stopping. After all, I’m only human! But I’d rather be a human who knows that he’s a hypocrite, and who tries to be less so, than one who mistakes his species-typical moral limitations for ideal values.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“An avowed anti-Catholic, Maurice Maeterlinck, the twentieth-century Belgian philosopher and playwright, weighed in with: “An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“As a devoted follower of Anthroposophy—Rudolf Steiner’s early-twentieth-century spiritual philosophy that comes with comprehensive rules of conduct—Johanna did not believe in inoculating her children against whooping cough. Steiner had declared that “these inoculations will influence the human body in a way that will make it refuse to give a home to the spiritual inclinations of the soul.” So Johanna did not vaccinate her children.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Meaninglessness in philosophical nihilism covers a wide spectrum, ranging from Metaphysical Nihilism, a negation of all existence, to Moral and Political Nihilism, a negation of a society’s values and laws in a world that we acknowledge exists but has the potential to be better. In this last sense, it is easy to see how breaking away from the inherited truths of society, governments, and religion can make life more enjoyable in an old-fashioned, hedonistic sort of way.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“A note about Prozac: I am absolutely all for taking Prozac if that is the choice a person makes. Even if a person is beset by the existential blues, if they choose to change the way they feel via medication, they have made a personal choice I fully respect. I know staunch Existentialists would disagree. They say that taking a pill that not only changes your mood, but changes your entire outlook on life, is an act of “bad faith.” This pill-taker is “unauthentic,” because he is treating himself as an object rather than as a subject. He is acting as if his world outlook is just another “thing” to be manipulated. Perhaps. But when I read the book Listening to Prozac by Dr. Peter Kramer, I was struck by how many pill-takers stated that once their depression lifted, they felt more like their “true selves” than ever before.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. . . . [But Philosophy] keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Nature, with her customary beneficence, has ordained that man shall not learn how to live until the reasons for living are stolen from him, that he shall find no enjoyment until he has become incapable of vivid pleasure.” —GIACOMO LEOPARDI, ITALIAN POET AND PHILOSOPHER
(1798–1837), PESSIMIST”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“life’s meaning is not something to look for but something to create myself”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Whereas Epicurus would have us rein in our desires and aspirations so that we can get the most pleasure out of what is right in front of us, Aristippus urges us to actively manipulate what is in front of us in order to maximize our pleasure.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It