Quote

Philosophy has to be enquiring it can take nothing on faith, and its methods are based not on the blind acceptance of authority, but on establishing truths by reason and argument.

Julian Baggini

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Julian Baggini
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 9
Author
Philosopher
Writer
Based
Enquiring
Authority
Establishing
Philosophy
Methods
Faith
Truths
Reason
Acceptance
Nothing
Method
Take
Argument
Blind

More quotes by Julian Baggini

Image
Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right.
Julian Baggini
Image
The reason to be an atheist is not that it makes us feel better or gives us a more rewarding life. The reason to be an atheist is simply that there is no God and we would prefer to live in full recognition of that, accepting the consequences, even if it makes us less happy.
Julian Baggini
Image
In my experience, those who make the biggest fuss about not spending much at Christmas are generally the ones who buy what they want and eat where they want 12 months a year.
Julian Baggini
Image
Seek first what is true and of value, and then whatever happiness follows will be of the appropriate quantity and, more importantly, quality.
Julian Baggini
Image
We do wrong willfully when we fail to think hard about whether what we're doing is right.
Julian Baggini
Image
Waiting is so unusual that many of us can't stand in a queue for 30 seconds without getting out our phones to check for messages or to Google something.
Julian Baggini
Image
Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice.
Julian Baggini
Image
Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world.
Julian Baggini
Image
From time to time, it is worth wandering around the fuzzy border regions of what you do, if only to remind yourself that no human activity is an island.
Julian Baggini
Image
Economics is uncertain because its fundamental subject matter is not money but human action. That's why economics is not the dismal science, it's no science at all.
Julian Baggini
Image
Rules matter, and to be rules they need to be universal in form: always do this, never do that. But it is foolish to rule out in advance the possibility that an occasion might arise when normal rules just don't apply. Rules are not there to be broken, but sometimes break them we must.
Julian Baggini
Image
The truly humble feel the ground beneath their feet every day and do not only become aware of it when held aloft or pushed down to their knees.
Julian Baggini
Image
Philosophy is at its most engaged when it is impure. What is being recovered from the Ancient Greek model is not some lost idea of philosophy's pure essence, but the idea that philosophy is mixed up with everything else.
Julian Baggini
Image
Many people are never happier than when they get the opportunity to complain, while others are deeply unhappy with how things are but just accept the fact. Complaint occurs when we refuse to accept that things are wrong and we do something about it, even if that something is simply articulating our unease.
Julian Baggini
Image
Yesterday's news feeds our fear that our neighbours are more likely than not to be bad eggs: benefit fraudsters, bogus asylum seekers, paedophiles or jihadist terrorists.
Julian Baggini
Image
Looking out over the port of Dover, with the endless steam of boats coming in and out, every British citizen is reminded that belonging here has never been about blood or genes. It's simply about being at home on this discrete island and being aware of the privileges and responsibilities that brings.
Julian Baggini
Image
One reason why it has become harder to promote the beneficial side of emotions such as anger is that the moral vocabulary of good and bad has been replaced by the self-help lexicon of positive and negative thinking.
Julian Baggini
Image
When you try to translate any kind of real-life problem into a neat logical form, you're almost always simplifying it. We need a kind of blend - we need to use not just tools of logic, which are important and valuable - I'm not denying that, but also tools of judgement, and of inductive and abductive reasoning which can also inform.
Julian Baggini
Image
Too often, complaint is not about principled objection on moral grounds, but opportunistic objection on grounds of self-interest. To rectify this, we need to work on mastering the art of complaint.
Julian Baggini
Image
Traditional arguments for the existence of God and contemporary attempts to use fine-tuning and cosmology to back up the case for his existence always strike me as kinds of games, since hardly anyone believes on the basis of these arguments at all.
Julian Baggini