Myles

“I find philosophy—philosophy in the largest sense—a profoundly concrete, sensual activity. I know others who feel the same. The world of ideas seems as solid as the world of seas and mountains—or more so. One can no more change its topography than one can move Samarqand closer to Bukhara, although one can discover new views or discover that one has gotten the topography wrong, or that many people have for many years. Ideas seem as embodied, in the world of ideas, with its views and obstructions and vastness, as we do in our material world. They seem tangible, with specific savors, aesthetic properties, emotional tones, curves, surfaces, insides, hidden places, structure, geometry, dark passages, shining corners, auras, force fields, and combinatorial chemistry. This is one great reason why “travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy,” as Bertrand Russell said, and why “it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast countries still very imperfectly explored.”
― Galen Strawson, Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, the Self, Etc.

“War it has been said, is diplomacy continued by other means.”
― Fitzroy MacLean, Eastern Approaches

“One cannot overstate the childishness of the ideas that feed and stir the masses. Real ideas must as a rule be simplified to the level of a child’s understanding if they are to arouse the masses to historic actions.”
― Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir

“The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory