Will Buckingham > Quotes

“If God is dead, Nietzsche is perhaps the person who stumbles across the corpse; nevertheless, it is Kant whose fingerprints are all over the murder weapon.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“It was George Bernard Shaw who famously said that you should not do to others as you would wish to be done to - the famous 'golden rule' of moral philosophy - because they might have other tastes.”
― Will Buckingham, Introducing Happiness: A Practical Guide

“There may indeed be more to life than a pot of cheese, a garden, a few friends; but these things, at least, may be a pretty good start.”
― Will Buckingham, Introducing Happiness: A Practical Guide

“Philosophy is not simply about ideas – it’s a way of thinking. There”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book

“If you are unable to feel anything, mentally or physically, when you die, it is foolish to let the fear of death cause you pain while you are still alive.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book

“Anyone performing evil actions would be acting against their conscience and would therefore feel uncomfortable; and as we all strive for peace of mind it is not something we would do willingly. Evil, he thought, was done because of lack of wisdom and knowledge. From”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“In 1865 English chemist John Newlands discovered that when the chemical elements are arranged according to atomic weight, those with similar properties occur at every eighth element, like notes of music. This discovery became known as the Law of Octaves, and it helped lead to the development of the Periodic Law of chemical elements still used today.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Pythagoras’s Theorem showed that shapes and ratios are governed by principles that can be discovered. This suggested that it might be possible, in time, to work out the structure of the entire cosmos.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“ALBERT CAMUS Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. His father was killed a year later in World War I, and Camus was brought up by his mother in extreme poverty.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“there is only one good: knowledge; and one evil: ignorance.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“The most important lesson we can draw from this, of course, is that it's best, if at all possible, not to become romantically involved with philosophers.”
― Will Buckingham, Introducing Happiness: A Practical Guide

“Georg Hegel was born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Germany, and studied theology at Tübingen where he met and became friends with the poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the philosopher Friedrich Schelling.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Bertrand Russell was born in Wales in 1872 to an aristocratic family. He had an early interest in mathematics, and went on to study the subject at Cambridge.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Aristotle departs from Plato, then, not by denying that universal qualities exist, but by questioning both their nature and the means by which we come to know them (the latter being the fundamental question of “epistemology”, or the theory of knowledge). And it was this difference of opinion on how we arrive at universal truths that later divided philosophers into two separate camps: the rationalists (including René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Gottfried Leibniz), who believe in a priori, or innate, knowledge; and the empiricists (including John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume), who claim that all knowledge comes from experience.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“JEAN-PAUL SARTRE Born in Paris, Sartre was just 15 months old when his father died. Brought up by his mother and grandfather, he proved a gifted student, and gained entry to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Dewey points out that it is important to realize that we can never completely control our environment or transform it to such an extent that we can drive out all uncertainty. At best, he says, we can modify the risky, uncertain nature of the world in which we find ourselves. But life is inescapably risky.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“The universe as a whole has no meaning and no purpose; it just is.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Even many non-religious theories of human nature, Sartre claims, still have their roots in religious ways of thinking, because they continue to insist that essence comes before existence, or that we are made for a specific purpose. In claiming that existence comes before essence, Sartre is setting out a position that he believes is more consistent with his atheism. There is no universal, fixed human nature, he declares, because no God exists who could ordain such a nature.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“1600s René Descartes claims that ideas come to us in three ways; they can be derived from experience, drawn from reason, or known innately (being created in the mind by God).”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“If wonder and curiosity are human attributes, so too are the thrill of exploration and the joy of discovery. We gain satisfaction of arriving at beliefs and ideas that are not handed down or forced upon us by society, teachers, religion, or even philosophers, but through our own individual reasoning.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“According to the account of his defence at his trial, recorded by Plato, Socrates chose death rather than face a life of ignorance: “The life which is unexamined is not worth living.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN Born into a wealthy Viennese family in 1889, Wittgenstein first studied engineering and in 1908 traveled to England to continue his education in Manchester.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“1861 John Stuart Mill argues that intellectual and spiritual pleasures have more value than physical pleasures.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“1517 Theologian Martin Luther writes The Ninety-Five Theses, protesting against clerical abuses. It triggers the start of the Reformation.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“When knowledge becomes data it is no longer the indefinable matter of minds, but a commodity that can be transferred, stored, bought, or sold.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Philosophy is not so much about coming up with the answers to fundamental questions as it is about the process of trying to find these answers, using reasoning rather than accepting without question conventional views or traditional authority.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Pythagoras also established the principle of deductive reasoning, which is the step-by-step process of starting with self-evident axioms (such as “2 + 2 = 4”) to build toward a new conclusion or fact. Deductive reasoning was later refined by Euclid, and it formed the basis of mathematical thinking into medieval times and beyond.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“with Protagoras there was a significant step in ethics towards the view that there are no absolutes and that all judgements, including moral judgements, are subjective.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom." Laozi”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book