Richard Taylor > Quotes

“Most people are, in the most ordinary sense, very limited. They pass their time, day after day, in idle, passive pursuits, just looking at things - at games, television, whatever. Or they fill the hours talking, mostly about nothing of significance - of comings and goings, of who is doing what, of the weather, of things forgotten almost as soon as they are mentioned. They have no aspirations for themselves beyond getting through another doing more or less what they did yesterday. They walk across the stage of life, leaving everything about as it was when they entered, achieving nothing, aspiring to nothing, having never a profound or even original thought... This is what is common, usual, typical, indeed normal. Relatively few rise above such a plodding existence.”
― Richard Taylor, Restoring Pride

“We see only a part of the surface of things. The rest will be forever hidden from us, to be appreciated for its felt but unfathomed presence.”
― Richard Taylor, Joys of Beekeeping

“Some people, no doubt, are born, and destined, to be common, to live out their lives to no significant purpose, but that is relatively rare…Most people have the power to be creative, and some have it in a god-like degree…But many people – perhaps even most – are content with the passing pleasures and satisfactions of the animal side of our nature. Indeed, many people will account their lives to be successful if they get through them with only minimal pain, with pleasant divergence from moment to moment and day-to-day, and the general approval of those around them. And this, notwithstanding that they often have within them the ability to do something which perhaps no other human being has ever done. Merely to do what others have done is often safe, and comfortable; but to do something truly original, and do it well, whether it is appreciated by others or not – that is what being human is really all about, and it is alone what justifies the self-love that is pride.”
― Richard Taylor, Restoring Pride

“Many people... go through life with hardly an original thought; gravitate from one pleasure or amusement to another; gain a livelihood doing what someone else has assigned; flee boredom as best they can; marry and beget children; and then, without having made the slightest difference of any unique significance, die and decay like any animal.”
― Richard Taylor, Restoring Pride

“We toil after goals, most of them—indeed every single one of them—of transitory significance and, having gained one of them, we immediately set forth for the next, as if that one had never been, with this next one being essentially more of the same. Look at a busy street any day, and observe the throng going hither and thither. To what? Some office or shop, where the same things will be done today as were done yesterday, and are done now so they may be repeated tomorrow…”
― Richard Taylor

“The equality of rights has been totally confused with the equality of human beings, when in truth they are utterly different.
In the first place, it is a simple fact that people do not all possess the same abilities, and that the vast array of talents and capacities that people do possess are, by almost universal consent, of unequal worth.
Some are honored for what they can do, and are long remembered for what they have done, while most, quite properly and correctly, are not.”
― Richard Taylor, Restoring Pride

“Sometimes the simplest and most obvious distinctions give rise to the profoundest intellectual difficulties, and things most commonplace in our daily experience drive home to us the depths of our ignorance”
― Richard Taylor, Metaphysics

“The question “what is good?” Is certainly the most important question you can ask. . . For it comes to this: each of us has one life to live, and that life can be, as it commonly is, wasted in the pursuit of specious goals, things that turn out worthless the moment they are possessed, or it can be made a deliberate and thoughtful art, wherein what was sought and, let us hope, in some measure gained, was something all the while worth striving for. Or we can put it this way: there will come a day for each of us to die, and on that day, if we have failed, we shall have failed irrevocably.”
― Richard Taylor, Good and Evil a New Direction

“Directions cannot be given for achieving personal excellence, because we are all different. The gifts and potentialities of one person are not those of another. Indeed, each person is unique. His or her gifts and abilities are probably not exactly matched by anyone else on earth. And from this it follows that one person’s excellence is his or hers alone. No one can tell you how to achieve yours. Your task is simply to find the one or few things that you can excel in, and then make it your primary business in life to excel in those ways. To do otherwise, to disregard the treasures with which you are at least potentially gifted, is simply to waste your life – a path to nothingness that is, alas, only too common.”
― Richard Taylor

“Thus instead of supposing that a work of art must be something that all can behold – a poem, a painting, a book, a great building – consider making of your own life a work of art. You have yourself to begin with, and a time of uncertain duration to work on it. You do not have to be what you are, and even though you may be quite content with who and what you are, it will not be hard for you to think of something much greater that you might become. It need not be something spectacular or even something that will attract any notice from others. What it will be is a kind of excellence that you project for yourself, and then attain – something you can then take a look at, with honest self appraisal, and be proud of.”
― Richard Taylor

“Most people are, in the most ordinary sense, very limited. They pass their time, day after day, in idle, passive pursuits, just looking at things – at games, television, whatever. Or they fill the hours talking, mostly about nothing of significance – of comings and goings, of who is doing what, of the weather, of things forgotten almost as soon as they are mentioned. They have no aspirations for themselves beyond getting through another day doing more or less what they did yesterday. They walk across the stage of life, leaving everything about as it was when they entered, achieving nothing, aspiring to nothing, having never a profound or even original thought…This is what is common, usual, typical, indeed normal. Relatively few rise above such a plodding existence.”
― Richard Taylor, Restoring Pride