Julian Baggini > Quotes

“Real life is about accepting ups and downs, the good and the bad, the possibility of failure as well as the ambition to succeed. Atheism speaks to the truth about our human nature because it recognizes all this and does not seek to shield us from the truth by myth and superstition”
― Julian Baggini

“Morality is more than possible without God, it is entirely independent of him.”
― Julian Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction

“Philosophy without criticism is like hunting deer without a shotgun, so, if you want people to like you, avoid robust philosophical debate.”
― Julian Baggini, The Duck That Won the Lottery: and 99 Other Bad Arguments

“Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.”
― Julian Baggini, The Philosopher's Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods

“Is it how we feel or how we think that is more important in determining whether we are morally good human beings?”
― Julian Baggini, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher

“This line of reasoning would seem to lead to the absurd conclusion that the world is filled with noises no one hears, colours no one sees, flavours no one tastes, textures no one feels, as well as a host of other sense experience we cannot even imagine. For there is no end in which creatures might possibly perceive the world.”
― Julian Baggini

“The point of seeing both sides isn’t to hover between them but to be able to come down on the right side with the right degree of conviction.”
― Julian Baggini

“Our desire to preserve is a form of denial about our own mortality. The fact that art can indure longer than people has lead some to seek a form of proxy-immortality through it. If we accept that art is mortal too, and that nothing is truly permanent, maybe we can see more clearly where the value of art and life is to be fount - in experiencing them.”
― Julian Baggini, The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher

“No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.’ Seneca (c. 4 BCE to 65 AD)”
― Julian Baggini, Philosophy: All That Matters

“Rhetoric is simply the use of language to persuade, and it can be used to persuade us of falsehoods as well as truths.”
― Julian Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction

“Working out whether or not the claims you make in your premises are true, while important, is simply not enough to ensure that you draw true conclusions. People make this mistake all the time. They forget that you can begin with a set of entirely true beliefs but reason so poorly as to end up with entirely false conclusions. The problem is that starting with truth doesn’t guarantee ending up with it.”
― Julian Baggini, The Philosopher's Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods

“You know what a word means when you know how to use it, not what its definition is. That is why we can understand and use all sorts of words that we struggle to define clearly if we are put on the spot and asked to do so.”
― Julian Baggini, Philosophy: All That Matters

“If we live with a good heart, good speech, and good action life will be good.”
― Julian Baggini

“To put it another way, we say the self has experiences but the self is actually just an ordered collection of experiences.”
― Julian Baggini, The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well

“Do not ask yourself whether you are brave or cowardly, generous or selfish, calm or volatile, but to what extent and in what ways you exhibit all of these traits.”
― Julian Baggini, The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well

“Yet another great psychological insight is that although we like to think we are reasonable people who base our conclusions on sound arguments, a lot of the time we simply use our intellects to rationalize what we already believe.”
― Julian Baggini, The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well

“A bird gives a cry–the mountains quiet all the more.’ 49 (This is also perhaps the real meaning behind Hakuin Ekaku’s famous eighteenth-century-BCE koan ‘What is the Sound of the Single Hand?’: it is an invitation to attend to the silence, the emptiness.”
― Julian Baggini, How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy

“Even if God were inclined to dole out post-mortem punishment it is more likely to be for the wicked than for the sceptical.”
― Julian Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction

“عندما نقول "فعلنا ما بدا لنا الأفضل في ذلك الوقت" هل حاولنا ما في وسعنا لمعرفة الأفضل في الحقيقة؟
ألن نكون أكثر صدقاً إذا وقفنا وقلنا أننا أحياناً فعلنا الشئ الخطأ وكان يمكننا وينبغي علينا أن نفعل الأفضل؟”
― Julian Baggini, The Duck That Won the Lottery: and 99 Other Bad Arguments

“A trap is for fish: when you’ve got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you’ve got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you’ve got the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find someone who’s forgotten words so I can have a word with him?8”
― Julian Baggini, How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy

“What the rise of religions did was to give a name to a set of beliefs (atheism) that had always existed but which was considered so unexceptional that it required no special label.”
― Julian Baggini, A Very British Populism

“Hindsight may be a wonderful thing, but foresight is even better. What a pity, then, that people have foresight only in hindsight.”
― Julian Baggini, The Duck That Won the Lottery: and 99 Other Bad Arguments

“No one can make up your mind for you, unless you make up your mind to let them.”
― Julian Baggini, A Short History of Truth: Consolations for a Post-Truth World

“If we pretend or imagine that life's purpose lies outside living itself, we will be searching the stars for what is underneath our feet all the time.”
― Julian Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction

“Nothing spreads fear like telling people that fear is spreading.”
― Julian Baggini, The Duck That Won the Lottery: and 99 Other Bad Arguments

“when people strongly disagree, try to find what they haven’t noticed unites them,”
― Julian Baggini, The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well

“We all have to make some basic assumptions that we cannot afford to doubt. Belief in our very sanity is in some sense a leap of faith.”
― Julian Baggini

“متي يكون مقبولاً استعمال تعبير مفرد لشئ نعرف في الواقع أنه يحتوي علي كثير من المتغيرات؟
متي -إذا حدث علي الإطلاق- يكون من العدل ان نضع أحكاماً عريضة عن المسيحية والإسلام والإرهاب وعمل الخير والسياسيين وتليفزيون الواقع والرسامين والتأثيريين والتجار المصرفيين والقيم البريطانية وأهل نيويورك؟
عندما تضع مثل هذه الأحكام،هل أنت عادل أم أنك تبسط الأمور بشدة؟”
― Julian Baggini, The Duck That Won the Lottery: and 99 Other Bad Arguments

“Judas betrays Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. No one in the Gospel ever judges of punishes him for this. Even Jesus, who is shown to know Judas will betray him, simply tells him "That thou doest, do quickly". But ultimately Judas sees he has done wrong and condemns himself. He goes to the chief priests and elders to return the silver, saying "I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood", then hangs himself. The price of 'sin' is not that you will be sent to hell by a divine judge or that karmic forces will ensure you're paid back. The price of being bad is that you have to live with being the person who did wrong.”
― Julian Baggini, The Godless Gospel

“It is intuitively plausible that if something has endured for centuries, there must be something in it. But on that logic, there must be something in slavery and the inequality of women.”
― Julian Baggini, The Duck That Won the Lottery: and 99 Other Bad Arguments