Quote

No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science.

Julian Baggini

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Julian Baggini
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 9
Author
Philosopher
Writer
Understood
Told
Universe
Fraction
Science
Fractions
Even
Awe
Cosmos
Fail
Failing

More quotes by Julian Baggini

Image
The mark of a mature, psychologically healthy mind is indeed the ability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity, but only as much as there really is. Uncertainty is no virtue when the facts are clear, and ambiguity is mere obfuscation when more precise terms are applicable.
Julian Baggini
Image
Justice can only be dispensed when you have all the facts in front of you.
Julian Baggini
Image
The idea that the mind can extend even beyond the body is an intriguing one, and is bound to become more pressing as we increasingly develop technologies that augment our natural abilities.
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
The modern believer is not suspicious enough, which is perhaps why when they try to construct arguments in their defence, the convictions are left doing all the work and reason, debilitated by neglect, weakly fails to prop them up.
Julian Baggini
Image
The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success.
Julian Baggini
Image
I am only me for practical purposes.
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
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
Happiness is not the same as life satisfaction, while neither are identical to what we might call flourishing.
Julian Baggini
Image
I don't believe in God because certain reasons and arguments weigh more heavily in my mind than others, not because I have willfully decided to reject my creator, as many religious people seem to think. I could no more simply decide to believe in God than I could decide to like beetroot, just like that.
Julian Baggini
Image
Daily life is better when it involves interactions with real people who have a personal investment in their labour, like shopkeepers, than it is with someone 'just doing my job' or the infernal self-checkout machine.
Julian Baggini
Image
Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice.
Julian Baggini
Image
I think that a lot of social movements, political movements, powerful ones - certainly they form, collectively, an idea of the truth which becomes hard to question. It becomes a dogma, and from the inside it starts to look like common sense.
Julian Baggini
Image
People do care where their food, or other goods, comes from, not merely if the price is right. And that means no business can afford to ignore the impacts their buying practices have on producers and on the perceptions and choices of consumers.
Julian Baggini
Image
As a teenager, I increasingly had questions about religion to which I found no good answers.
Julian Baggini
Image
If philosophy is to be a valuable part of life, we have to appreciate it for its own sake, and not just for what it's done for us lately.
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
You don't choose what you believe moment to moment, but choices you have made do shape what you come to believe.
Julian Baggini
Image
The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives.
Julian Baggini