Most people believe, more or less, that the value of a human life is the same, irrespective of where on the planet it happens to find itself. But, of course, not every life has the same value for us. Julian Baggini Read Quote
If I hammer my own thumb while doing some DIY, it’s not nice, but it’s not the end of the world. To care obsessively about similar levels of discomfort in animals seems to be a case of mistaken moral priorities. Julian Baggini Read Quote
When you try to cool down hot emotions, what tends to happen is that you end up either repressing them or losing them altogether. Neither is desirable. Without emotion, much social interaction loses its meaning or changes for the worse. Julian Baggini Read Quote
Science works because the phenomenon being described can be relied on to remain the same. Even in quantum physics, where phenomena are changed by observation, the way in which observation interferes is regular and falls within a limited range of possibilities. Human culture, however, has the nasty habit of never staying the same for very long. Julian Baggini Read Quote
Philosophy is at its most engaged when it is impure. What is being recovered from the Ancient Greek model is not some lost idea of philosophy’s pure essence, but the idea that philosophy is mixed up with everything else. Julian Baggini Read Quote
No matter how convinced we are that someone is nasty, evil or just plain criminal, if they have not been convicted of any crime and support views that are upheld and defended by many law-abiding citizens, the only way to tackle them is through democratic debate. Julian Baggini Read Quote
Wellbeing is a notion that entails our values about the good life, and questions of values are not ultimately scientific questions. Julian Baggini Read Quote
There are many things you shouldn’t measure. Don’t, for example, try to measure how much you love your wife! Julian Baggini Read Quote
No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science. Julian Baggini Read Quote
I don’t feel proprietorial about the problems of philosophy. History has taught us that many philosophical issues can grow up, leave home and live elsewhere. Julian Baggini Read Quote
