Dan > Recent Status Updates

‘There isn’t any need for a civilized man to bear anything that’s seriously unpleasant.’

'One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.'

'When the will to power is in charge,
the higher the ideals, the lower the results.
Try to make people happy,
and you lay the groundwork of misery.
Try to make people moral,
and you lay the groundwork for vice.'

‘Oh brave new world that has such people in it.’

'He holds nothing back from life;
therefore he is ready for death,
as a man is ready for sleep
after a good day's work'

'The religious reference in our national identity doesn't so much disappear, as change, retreat to a certain distance. It remains powerful in memory; but also as a kind of reserve fund of spiritual force or consolation'

"The result is what I'm calling a 'neo-Durkheimian effect, where the sense of belonging to group and confession are fused, and the moral issues of the group's history tend to be coded in religious categories"

"Our visions of the good are tied up with our understandings of the self."

"I believe I am right to deny that the bias in one's own favour is supremely rational"

“The idea of blaming God gets a clearer sense and becomes much more salient in the modern era where people begin to think they know just what God was purposing in creating the world, and can check the results against the intention.”

"Reject every system of ethics, however subtile or ingenious, which is not founded on fact and observation."

'For there are many things that cause the ruin and maiming of human beings; and although these are not pleasant in fact, they are pleasant to such people when they are in such a condition.'

'It is the true arguments, then, that seem most useful, not only with a view to knowledge but also with a view to life.'

'If a horticulturist succeeded in creating a chemical potion that prevented rosebuds from growing into roses, and his garden were filled with buds that never opened and ended their existence by merely shriveling away, we would have no hesitation in saying that there was something wrong with that garden.'