Simon Blackburn > Quotes

“How you think about what you are doing affects how you do it, or whether you do it at all.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life throws up.”
― Simon Blackburn

“Someone sitting on a completely unreasonable belief is sitting on a time bomb. The apparently harmless, idiosyncratic belief of the Catholic Church that one thing may have the substance of another, although it displays absolutely none of its empirical qualities, prepares people for the view that some people are agents of Satan in disguise, which in turn makes it reasonable to destroy them.”
― Simon Blackburn, Truth: A Guide

“There are always people telling us what we want, how they will provide it, and what we should believe. Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“Reflection opens the avenue to criticism, and the folkways may not like criticism. In this way, ideologies become closed circles, primed to feel outraged by the questioning mind.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“[...] like any human practices, those of religions are not exempt from ethical questioning. Rituals and rites in groups change behavior, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. For the madness of crowds is a very close cousin to the fervor or congregations and the martial spirit of armies.”
― Simon Blackburn, Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love

“Others may want to stand upon the ‘politics of identity’, or in other words the kind of identification with a particular tradition, or group, or national or ethnic identity that invites them to turn their back on outsiders who question the ways of the group. They will shrug off criticism: their values are ‘incommensurable’ with the values of outsiders. They are to be understood only by brothers and sisters within the circle. People like to retreat to within a thick, comfortable, traditional set of folkways, and not to worry too much about their structure, or their origins, or even the criticisms that they may deserve. Reflection opens the avenue to criticism, and the folkways may not like criticism. In this way, ideologies become closed circles, primed to feel outraged by the questioning mind.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“belief is to knowledge as shadow is to original”
― Simon Blackburn

“Freedom is a dangerous word, just because it is an inspirational one.”
― Simon Blackburn, Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics

“We may worry that the witness has the whole of time and space in its gaze, and our life shrinks to nothingness, just an insignificant, infinitesimal fragment of the whole. ‘The silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me,’ said Blaise Pascal (1623–62). But the Cambridge philosopher Frank Ramsey (1903–30) replied: Where I seem to differ from some of my friends is in attaching little importance to physical size. I don’t feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does. I take no credit for weighing nearly seventeen stone. My picture of the world is drawn in perspective, and not like a model to scale. The foreground is occupied by human beings, and the stars are all as small as threepenny bits.”
― Simon Blackburn, Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics

“We can check on what people say by seeing what they do.”
― Simon Blackburn, Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics

“Reflection matters because it is continuous with practice. How you think about what you are doing affects how you do it, or whether you do it at all.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“WORTH IT?

It is no credit to our phase of civilization if it is fear rather than ambition that drives most of those who bankrupt themselves on the vanities, or who end up under the surgeon's knife. It is the fear of falling short, of being inadequate in the eyes of others, including loved ones. [...]
It is unfitting, one might say, improper, treating one's owm body as a tool rather than a part of oneself. [...]
The bottom line is that it dishonors ourselves, for we ought to think better of ourselves than that.”
― Simon Blackburn, Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love

“To process thoughts well is a matter of being able to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities, keep things in mind one at a time, make reliable arguments, become aware of alternatives, and so on.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“Science similarly contains within itself the devices for correcting the illusions of science. That is its crowning glory. When we come upon intellectual endeavours that contain no such devices—one might cite psychoanalysis, grand political theories, ‘new age’ science, creationist science—we need not be interested.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“the unexamined life is not worth living. It has insisted on the power of rational reflection to winnow out bad elements in our practices, and to replace them with better ones.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“A system of thought is something we live in, just as much as a house, and if our intellectual house is cramped and confined, we need to know what better structures are possible. The”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“I cannot climb out onto the nature of your mind. So how then do I know anything about your mental life? How do I know, for instance, that you see the colour blue the way that I do? Might it be that some of us feel pain more, but make less fuss about it, or that others feel pain less, but make more fuss?”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“The time we take out, whether it is to do mathematics or music, or to read Plato or Jane Austen, is time to be cherished.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“It is the thought that the least efficient way of of finding either happiness or pleasure is to pursue them. Put in terms of happiness, we can see it like this: To be happy you must quite literally "lose yourself". You must lose yourself in some pursuit; you need to forget your own happiness and find other goals and projects, other objects of concern that might include the welfare of some other people, or the cure of the disease, or simply in the variety of everyday activities with their little successes and setbacks.”
― Simon Blackburn, Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love

“One peculiarity of our present [ethical] climate is that we care much more about our rights than about our 'good'. For previous thinkers about ethics, such as those who wrote the Upanishads, or Confucius, or Plato, or the founders of the Christian tradition, the central concern was the state of one's soul, meaning some personal state of justice or harmony. Such a state might include resignation or renunciation, or detachment, or obedience, or knowledge, especially self-knowledge. For Plato there could be no just political order except one populated by just citizens.... Today we tend not to believe that; we tend to think that modern constitutional democracies are fine regardless of the private vices of those within them. We are much more nervous talking about our good: it seems moralistic, or undemocratic, or elitist. Similarly, we are nervous talking about duty. The Victorian ideal of a life devoted to duty, or a calling, is substantially lost to us. So a greater proportion of our moral energy goes to protecting claims against each other, and that includes protecting the state of our soul as purely private, purely our own business.”
― Simon Blackburn, Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics

“He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“So the middle-ground answer reminds us that reflection is continuous with practice, and our practice can go worse or better according to the value of our reflections.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything. We are typically ready to believe that our ways, our beliefs, our religion, our politics are better than theirs, or that our God-given rights trump theirs or that our interests require defensive or pre-emptive strikes against them. In the end, it is ideas for which people kill each other. It is because of ideas about what the others are like, or who we are, or what our interests or rights require, that we go to war, or oppress others with a good conscience, or even sometimes acquiesce in our own oppression by others. When these beliefs involve the sleep of reason, critical awakening is the antidote.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“An argument is valid when there is no way—meaning no possible way—that the premises, or starting points, could be true without the conclusion being true”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“... consider the many ways of failing that await the poet who makes his or her own consciousness of emotions into the subject of a poem, instead of the emotion itself.”
― Simon Blackburn, BLACKBURN:RULING PASSIONS PAPER: A Theory of Practical Reasoning

“Reflection enables us to step back, to see our perspective on a situation as perhaps distorted or blind, at the very least to see if there is argument for preferring our ways, or whether it is just subjective.”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything. We are typically ready to believe that our ways, our beliefs, our religion, our politics are better than theirs, or that our God-given rights trump theirs or that our interests require defensive or pre-emptive strikes against them. In the end, it is ideas for which people kill each other. It is because of ideas about what the others are like, or who we are, or what our interests or rights require, that we go to war, or oppress others with a good conscience, or even sometimes acquiesce in our own oppression by others. When these beliefs involve the sleep of reason, critical awakening is the antidote. Reflection enables us to step back, to see our perspective on a situation as perhaps distorted or blind, at the very least to see if there is argument for preferring our ways, or whether it is just subjective”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

“Que sais-je?’—what do I know?”
― Simon Blackburn, Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy