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“The four major branches of philosophy – metaphysics (the study of reality); epistemology (the study of knowledge); politics (the study of state power); and ethics (the study of virtue) – are like the plumbing that delivers water to your sink. Aqueducts, sewers, piping – these all only have value insofar as they enable you to turn on a tap in your house and actually get some clean water. Metaphysics,”
― Stefan Molyneux, Essential Philosophy: How to know what on earth is going on

“Only tyrants and fools made martyrs. He was certainly no fool. And he was no tyrant either- how could he be, he had suffered a hideous stroke. He was a victim. The victim excuse, where evil is born.”
― Craig Ferguson, Between the Bridge and the River

“I don’t know why I was so afraid of failure; the most interesting people I know have failed more than they have succeeded. This may be because life is not as simple as it appears to a desperately ambitious young man, or it could be that all my friends are losers.”
― Craig Ferguson, Riding the Elephant: A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations, and Observations

“Virtue is a complicated subject, but I am sure we can agree that virtue must involve some basics that are commonly understood, such as courage, integrity, benevolence, empathy, wisdom and so on. If this is the case, it cannot be possible to love people that we know very little about. If love requires virtue, then we cannot love perfect strangers, because we know nothing about their virtues. Love depends both on another person’s virtue, and our knowledge of it – and it grows in proportion to that virtue and knowledge, if we are virtuous ourselves.”
― Stefan Molyneux, On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion