Kiselm's submitted quotes
We are designed by evolution to be "informavores", epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world, the better to make decisions about our subjectively open future.
If I know better than you know what I am up to, it is only because I spend more time with myself than you do.
Some philosophers can`t bear to say simple things, like "Suppose a dog bites a man." They feel obliged instead to say, "Suppose a dog d bites a man m at time t," thereby demonstrating their unshakable commitment to logical rigor, even though they don`t go on to manipulate any formulae involving d, m, and t.
Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.
Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about - about what the issues really are - and so it often takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.
If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else. In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law.
Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.
Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.
The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.
Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious.
I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.
We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.