Working the Questions

When people ask me what philosophy is, I say philosophy is what you do when you don't know what the right questions are yet. Once you get the questions right, then you go answer them, and that's typically not philosophy, that's one science or another. Anywhere in life where you find that people aren't quite sure what the right questions to ask are, what they're doing, then, is philosophy. -- Daniel Dennett

Forced Déjà vu

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. -- André Gide

Rule

There is one rule that's very simple, but not easy: observe reality and adjust. -- Ran Prieur

You do what you have to do

Chu-p’ing Man studied the art of killing dragons under Crippled Yi. It cost him all the thousand pieces of gold he had in his house, and after three years he'd mastered the art, but there was no one who could use his services. -- Chuang Tzu

So he decided to teach others the art of killing dragons -- René Thom

Self-inflicted myopia

I do think that at a minimum, if you believe that one person’s interests are intrinsically more important than another’s (or as the more sophisticated versions play out, that ethics is agent-relative), then something has gone fundamentally wrong, and this, I think, is the core of the distinction between left and right. Being a rightist in this sense is totally indefensible, and a sign that yes, you should give up on attempting to ascertain any sort of moral truth, because you can’t do it. -- GCUPokeItWithAStick

Bondage

Why is there irony in "the truth shall set you free"? The irony is that all the truth gives you is a longer chain. The cost is that you better know the length of your chain. Most people are on short chains, and imagine they are free. -- Charles St. Pierre