Scott Samuelson > Quotes

“Always keep Ithaca on your mind.       To arrive there is your ultimate goal.       But do not hurry the voyage at all.       It is better to let it last for many years;       and to anchor at the island when you are old,       rich with all you have gained on the way,       not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.       Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.       Without her you would have never set out on the road.       She has nothing more to give you.       And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.       Wise as you have become, with so much experience,       you must already have understood what these Ithacas mean.”
― Scott Samuelson, The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone

“When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,       pray that the road is long,       full of adventure, full of knowledge.”
― Scott Samuelson, The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone

“something that exceeds time is dissolved into our experience of time.”
― Scott Samuelson, The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone

“When our friend falls victim to an unexpected stroke, when our community is struck by a terrible crime or natural disaster, when we’re diagnosed with some awful malady, it somehow shocks us. Doesn’t the fact of our being surprised prove that we live in obliviousness to our surrounding suffering?”
― Scott Samuelson, Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering: What Philosophy Can Tell Us about the Hardest Mystery of All

“if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event.”
― Scott Samuelson, Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering: What Philosophy Can Tell Us About the Hardest Mystery of All

“What we think of as distinctively human—technology, art, religion, politics, philosophy—depends on a gap between how the world is and how we think it should be. If there were no gap, we’d never have developed tools: What improvement could they offer?”
― Scott Samuelson, Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering: What Philosophy Can Tell Us About the Hardest Mystery of All

“Evils which are patiently endured when they seem inevitable, become intolerable when once the idea of escape from them is suggested.”
― Scott Samuelson, Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering: What Philosophy Can Tell Us About the Hardest Mystery of All