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No one has ever understood anything better by assuming that there is no reason for why it is the way it is.

Julian Baggini

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Julian Baggini
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: September 9
Author
Philosopher
Writer
Better
Ever
Way
Assuming
Understood
Anything
Reason

More quotes by Julian Baggini

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You don't choose what you believe moment to moment, but choices you have made do shape what you come to believe.
Julian Baggini
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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
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Stress means something different if it is the result of rewarding work rather than struggling to keep the family out of debt.
Julian Baggini
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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
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True humility is expressed in deeds, not words. The humble are those who truly walk the same ground as everyone else - not necessarily with grovelling, hunched backs, but certainly not lording it over others, either.
Julian Baggini
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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
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Happiness is not the same as life satisfaction, while neither are identical to what we might call flourishing.
Julian Baggini
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This is the deal: we are happy to single out people as superior just as long as they don't accept the description themselves. We want heroes and idols but we also want egalitarianism and that requires proclamations of humility from our Gods.
Julian Baggini
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Any celebration meal to which guests are invited, be they family or friends, should be an occasion for generous hospitality.
Julian Baggini
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As a teenager, I increasingly had questions about religion to which I found no good answers.
Julian Baggini
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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
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It is true that legality is not morality, and sticking to the law is necessary for good citizenship, but it is not sufficient.
Julian Baggini
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It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim never say never is one of the most important in ethics.
Julian Baggini
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If we find it hard to believe that winning millions might not be so lucky after all, we just don't have a good enough imagination. If I fantasise about winning the lottery, it doesn't take long before all sorts of worrisome potential consequences occur to me.
Julian Baggini
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Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality.
Julian Baggini
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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
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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
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Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice.
Julian Baggini
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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
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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