Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.
Apocalypses don't happen very often. They tend to be separated by tens or even hundreds of millions of years.
[This approach] displays the characteristic philosophical lust to vanquish the skeptic by arguing him out of his skepticism, without appeal to moral and political considerations or to the facts of everyday life. [. . . ] But more often than not, if you give the skeptic everything he wants, then he will be successful in repulsing your attacks and terrorizing your position.
I grew up as an only child of two parents who had dropped out of high school. They had enormous respect for education and encouraged me as a child when I had strong interests in both math and science, but we really didn't have much by way of educational role modeling in our family.
The density of human population combined with the development of powerful and largely unconstrained technology has given us the problems of the anthropocene and the serious possibility of self-caused extinction.
Aristotle thought that humans are rational animals and Hobbes thought that we act on the basis of rational self-interest. If only! It's not that we never do these things, it's that they are hardly constituative of who and what we are.
The Enlightenment is not a nightmare, nor is it something that comes easily to us. It is an aspiration - and a good one!
The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world.
Let me tell you something: for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.
Even if I'm writing music, it's with a lyric in mind, to communicate some kind of feeling.
They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon.