54 Quotes by Richard Rorty

All human relations untouched by love take place in the dark

To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that languages are human creations.~ The suggestion that truth~ is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language his own.

All human relations untouched by love take place in the dark.

At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one’s life fighting social injustice.

You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It’s like aspirin. You can’t use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.

Academic disciplines are subject to being overtaken by attacks of “knowingness”- a state of mind and soul that prevents shudders of awe and makes one immune to enthusiasm.

I think that a good Left is a party that always thinks about the future and doesn’t care much about our past sins.

The most important advance that the West has yet made is to develop a secularist moral tradition.

I think you can have a Left that isn’t culturally conservative talking about lunch-bucket issues.