Alex Matthews

“The calls of birds and the traces left by wolves to mark off their territories are no less forms of language than the sings of humans. What is distinctively human is not the capacity for language. It is the crystallisation of language in writing.”
― John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

“It’s impossible to read much contemporary polemic against religion without the impression that for the “new atheists” the world would be a better place if Jewish and Christian monotheism had never existed. If only the world wasn’t plagued by these troublesome God-botherers, they are always lamenting, liberal values would be so much more secure. Awkwardly for these atheists, Nietzsche understood that modern liberalism was a secular incarnation of these religious traditions. As a classical scholar, he recognised that a mystical Greek faith in reason had shaped the cultural matrix from which modern liberalism emerged. Some ancient Stoics defended the ideal of a cosmopolitan society; but this was based in the belief that humans share in the Logos, an immortal principle of rationality that was later absorbed into the conception of God with which we are familiar. Nietzsche was clear that the chief sources of liberalism were in Jewish and Christian theism: that is why he was so bitterly hostile to these religions. He was an atheist in large part because he rejected liberal values.”
― John N. Gray

“There is nothing uniquely human in the flicker of sentience that is commonly called consciousness. Dolphins delight in watching themselves in mirrors when they are having sex, while chimps react to the death of those they care for in much the same ways that humans do. It will be objected that these animals have no clear understanding of the kind of creature they are or what it means to die. In this regard too, however, they are no different from humans.”
― John N. Gray, The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Inquiry into Human Freedom

“The concept of decline has been cancelled from the Western lexicon. If it is allowed at all, it is only as a pedagogic device signifying a history that can be corrected. Signs of decay are hailed as progress, disasters as learning experiences that augur a better future.”
― John Gray, The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism