Truth Is What Your Contemporaries Let You

The Most Important Advance That The West Has Yet Made Is To Develop A Secularist Moral Tradition

Philosophers Get Attention Only When They Appear To Be Doing Something Sinister - Corrupting The Youth, Undermining The Foundations Of Civilization, Sneering At All We Hold Dear. The Rest Of The Time Everybody Assumes That They Are Hard At Work Somewhere Down In The Sub-basement, Keeping Those Foundations In Good Repair. Nobody Much Cares What Brand Of Intellectual Duct Tape Is Being Used.

The World Does Not Speak. Only We Do. The World Can, Once We Have Programmed Ourselves With A Language, Cause Us To Hold Beliefs. But It Cannot Propose A Language For Us To Speak. Only Other Human Beings Can Do That.

I Now Wish That I Had Spent Somewhat More Of My Life With Verse. This Is Not Because I Fear Having Missed Out On Truths That Are Incapable Of Statement In Prose. There Are No Such Truths; There Is Nothing About Death That Swinburne And Landor Knew But Epicurus And Heidegger Failed To Grasp. Rather, It Is Because I Would Have Lived More Fully If I Had Been Able To Rattle Off More Old Chestnuts — just As I Would Have If I Had Made More Close Friends.

If I Had To Lay Bets, My Bet Would Be That Everything Is Going To Go To Hell, But, You Know, What Else Have We Got Except Hope?