All Quotes

"Why should it not be the whole function of a word to denote many things?"

"In one sense "there are" both universals and material objects, in another sense there is no such thing as either: statements about each can usually be analysed, but not always, nor always without remainder."

"But surely, speaking carefully, we do not sense "red" and "blue" any more than "resemblance" (or "qualities" any more than "relations"): we sense something of which we might say, if we wished to talk about it, that "this is red.""

"It may justly be urged that, properly speaking, what alone has meaning is a sentence."

"Faced with the nonsense question "What is the meaning of a word?" and perhaps dimly recognizing it to be nonsense, we are nevertheless not inclined to give it up."

"Ordinary language blinkers the already feeble imagination."

"If we say that I only get at the symptoms of his anger, that carries an important implication. But is this the way we do talk?"

"But suppose we take the noun "truth": here is a case where the disagreements between different theorists have largely turned on whether they interpreted this as a name of a substance, of a quality, or of a relation."

"We become obsessed with "truth" when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with "freedom" when discussing conduct...Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal."

"Like "real", "free" is only used to rule out the suggestion of some or all of its recognized antitheses. As "truth" is not a name of a characteristic of assertions, so "freedom" is not a name for a characteristic of actions, but the name of a dimension in which actions are assessed."

"Nothing works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every "impersonal" duty, every sacrifice before the Moloch of abstraction.—To think that no one has thought of Kant's categorical imperative as dangerous to life! … What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure—as a mere automaton of duty? That is the recipe for decadence, and no less for idiocy. … Instinct at fault in everything and anything, instinct as a revolt against nature, German decadence as a philosophy—that is Kant!"

"Kant's view of the nature of what is "actually real" remained unaltered throughout his life. Reality is in itself a system of existing thought-essences brought into a unity by teleological relations that are intuitively thought by the Divine intellect, and by this very act of thought posited as real. ...If one... makes Kant either a sceptical agnostic who teaches the unknowableness of things-in-themselves, or a subjective idealist for whom there is no reality in itself at all, he will never be able to make anything of his philosophy. ...Kant is no forbidding or threatening name, but a kindly disposed patron. It happens that for many the Critique of Pure Reason is the first philosophical book that they seriously attempt to read. ...the book is not well suited to this purpose. Kant himself would not have recommended it. He did not even write the Prolegomena for pupils, but for future teachers of philosophy. ...They presuppose nothing less than an acquaintance with the entire state of philosophy at the time, with dogmatism and scepticism, with Leibniz and Hume. ...Kant's philosophy is the door to the philosophy of our century, and the door to the Kantian philosophy is the Critique of Pure Reason."

"For Kant, there are no different religions, but rather different forms of belief in divine revelation [...] among which Christianity, as far as we know, is the most appropriate."

"Individualism, united with altruism, has become the basis of our western civilization. It is the central doctrine of Christianity ('love your neighbor,' say the Scriptures, not 'love your tribe'); and it is the core of all ethical doctrines which have grown from our civilization and stimulated it. It is also, for instance, Kant's central practical doctrine ("always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as mere means to your end.")"

"I was shocked many years ago when a physicist said to me that Kant was the greatest astrophysicist in a hundred-year period. And I asked “Why do you say that? You talk about Kant-Lagrange hypothesis?” He said “No, that was only a hypothesis. Kant showed by a very eloquent geometrical argument that we live near the edge of landscape galaxy in the center of the sphere that resembles Andromeda nebula”. I never heard of that, no philosopher told me that, no historian of philosophy told me that, an astronomer told me that! It was Steven Weinberg; he then said that Kant was the only astrophysicist in about a hundred years who believed that star clustering could be accounted for by gravitation alone."

"Immanuel Kant was the first hippie in history."

"I should liken Kant to a man at a ball, who all evening has been carrying on a love affair with a masked beauty in the vain hope of making a conquest, when at last she throws off her mask and reveals herself to be his wife."

"Einstein has not — as you sometimes hear — given the lie to Kant’s deep thoughts on the idealization of space and time; he has, on the contrary, made a large step towards its accomplishment."

"Even when altruism is allowed (as, for example, in Gary Becker's model of rational allocation), it is assumed that the altruistic actions are undertaken because they promote each person's own interests; there are personal gains to the altruist's own welfare, thanks to sympathy for others. No role is given to any sense of commitment about behaving well or to pursuing some selfless objective. All this leaves out, on the one hand, the evil passions that early theorists of capitalism contrasted with selfinterest and, on the other, the social commitments that Kant analyzed in The Critique of Practical Reason and that Adam Smith discussed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments."

"”Prussia,” remarked Mirabeau, ”is not a state with an army, but an army with a state.” And the state, which was run with the efficiency and soullessness of a factory, became all; the people were little more than cogs in the machinery. Individuals were taught not only by the kings and the drill sergeants but by the philosophers that their role in life was one of obedience, work, sacrifice and duty. Even Kant preached that duty demands the suppression of human feeling…"

"Kant's 'discovery' went thus. Any property that a real x had, an imaginary x could have, and any property that an imaginary x could have, a real x could have. So Existence is not a property. (Hearty applause, maintained steadily for 200 years so far.)"

"Kant's questions are so strange and arresting that no one who has once heard them ever forgets them. It is just the reverse with his answers to them: no one can ever remember what these are! And there is a simple reason for this: the questions never get answered at all. Once they have served as an excuse for the darkening of sufficient area of wood-pulp, they just get lost."

"The man Butler, whose works were perhaps known to the man Kant, wished to save the belief in the immortality of the soul, and with this object he made it independent of belief in God. The first chapter of his Analogy treats, as I have said, of the future life, and the second of the government of God by rewards and punishments. And the fact is that, fundamentally, the good Anglican bishop deduces the existence of God from the immortality of the soul. And as this deduction was the good Anglican bishop's starting-point, he had not to make that somersault which at the close of the same century the good Lutheran philosopher had to make. Butler, the bishop, was one man and Kant, the professor, another man."

"Kant believed that the concept of time is a prior condition of our minds that affects our experience of the world, but this does not explain why different human societies have had different concepts of time and have assigned different degrees of significance to the temporal aspect of phenomena. ...instead of being a prior condition, our concept of time should be regarded as a consequence of our experience of the world, the result of a long evolution. ...In recent years it has become clear that all our mental abilities are potential capacities which we can only realize in practice by learning how to use them."

"Today, at any leading American university, a Kant, with all his dithering about God, freedom, and immortality, or even a Hume, wouldn't survive a year in graduate school, much less get hired as an instructor."

"[on the loudspeaker] Attention Rex Manning fans, to your left you will notice a shoplifter being chased by night manager, Lucas. This young man will be caught, deep fried in a vat of hot oil and served to our first hundred customers. [chuckles] Just another tasty treat from the gang at Empire Records."

"We mustn't dwell... no, not today. We CAN'T. Not on Rex Manning day!"

"[answers phone] Empire Records, we're open 'til midnight. [pause] Midnight."

"[into television camera] Damn the man. Save the Empire."

"Open 'til Midnight."

"They're selling music but not selling out."

"Damn the Man! Save the Empire!"

"This music is the glue of the world. It holds it all together."

"What's with today, today?"

"Anthony LaPaglia - Joe Reaves"

"Maxwell Caulfield - Rex Manning"

"Debi Mazar - Jane"

"Rory Cochrane - Lucas"

"Liv Tyler - Corey Mason"

"Johnny Whitworth - A.J."

"Robin Tunney - Debra"

"Renee Zellweger - Gina"

"Ethan Embry - Mark"

"Coyote Shivers - Berko"

"Brendan Sexton - Warren"

"James 'Kimo' Wills - Eddie"

"Brandon Crawford - Couch Kid #2"

"Ben Bodé - Mitchell"

"[to Sonny] Calvin's fine, save me!"

"[To Spooner] What...am...I?"