41 Quotes by Simon Blackburn

Chance is as relentless as necessity.

An ethic gone wrong is an essential preliminary to the sweat shop or the concentration camp and the death march.

It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart.

Why should thinkers mock the simple pieties of the people?

The absolutist parades his good solid grounding in observation, reason, objectivity, truth and fact; the relativist sees only fetishes.

If our best efforts come to nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma, are sometimes consoling.

The fantasist in whom the reality barrier has broken down is unreliable, believing things when he should not, and telling things as true when they are not.

Thoughts are strange things. they have ‘representational’ powers: a thought typically represents the world as being one way or another. A sensation, by contrast, seems to just sit there.

We can grieve over lost powers and memories, or rejoice over gained knowledge and maturity, according to taste.