Jacob M. Held > Quotes

“For people like this life is just about stuff.
Having more than your neighbor and never enough.
For these types of folks it's all about fortune and fame.
What pays off is good, what does not is lame.
So they don't and they won't and they can't understand.
It's wisdom, not money that makes life grand.”
― Jacob M. Held, Dr. Seuss and Philosophy: Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!

“perhaps the problem of evil is a human problem, one of an egotistical mind-set, an anthropocentric bent in our thinking and perspective.”
― Jacob M. Held, Stephen King and Philosophy

“Children think around corners.”
― Jacob M. Held, Stephen King and Philosophy

“great literature is literature that speaks to deep, fundamental human truths and experience in a way that is relatable to the reader and that may provoke engagement or facilitate insight into these truths and experiences. If these truths and experiences are about breaches of the normal, then surely horror has a place in literature, and in facts may proffer deep engagement with the most profound aspects of our existence. Sometimes only horror can say what needs to be said.”
― Jacob M. Held, Stephen King and Philosophy

“One can best describe the culture of consumerism as the unbridled consumption of commodities for the satisfaction of psychological needs that cannot be satisfied through the practice of consumption”
― Jacob M. Held, Dr. Seuss and Philosophy: Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!

“Real philosophy is dense, impenetrable, so esoteric as to be unknown and so obscure as to be irrelevant... Maybe what I do is trivial, the philosophical equivalent of a Big Mac and fries”
― Jacob M. Held

“It's the role of narrative to... bridge the gap between philosophy as abstract theory, ideas in the ether, and life as lived on the ground.”
― Jacob M. Held, Stephen King and Philosophy

“For instance, a snob may claim that men dressing in drag and engaging in slapstick humor is beneath them, juvenile, base. Monty Python and the Kids in the Hall is lowbrow humor. But the same phenomena, namely, cross-dressing tomfoolery, is acceptable and high art if it’s done by “The Bard.”
― Jacob M. Held, Stephen King and Philosophy

“We are finite, we are temporal, and we are embodied.”
― Jacob M. Held, Stephen King and Philosophy

“Knowledge requires that what we believe is true and that we can justify our belief that it is true. In this way, the pursuit of knowledge resembles the work of police detectives: it’s not enough to get the right man, you also must have the evidence.”
― Jacob M. Held, Dr. Seuss and Philosophy: Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!