Bernard Williams has been a distinctive presence on the intellectual scene for more than three decades. . . … - Colin McGinn

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Your actions become your habits. Don't let yourself make a pattern of slipups or they'll become habits!

Colin McGinn

Bernard Williams has been a distinctive presence on the intellectual scene for more than three decades. . . . His writings do not offer the dubious exhilaration of grand philosophical theory, in which messy reality is tamed and caged, but the thrill of seeing pretension punctured by a kind of high-voltage common sense (backed up by impressive erudition). . . . There is no one in philosophy quite like him.

Backed, Bernard, Philosophical, Philosophy, Thrill, Writing

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Our treatment of animals, in every department, is deeply and systematically immoral. Becoming a vegetarian is only the most minimal ethical response to the magnitude of the evil.

Animal, Becoming, Deeply, Ethical, Evil, Magnitude

Once you were just insentient cells, no more aware of anything than your liver is now. Today you are brimming with consciousness. How did you make the grade? What catapulted you into consciousness? There must be some kind of natural process behind this astonishing leap, but this process is obscure.

Aware, Cells, Kind, Natural, Today

Faith is believing things by definition, which are not justified by reason. If it were justified by reason, it wouldn't be faith. It would just be ordinary belief. It's something you can't prove. That's what faith is, believing something you can't prove.

Belief, Believe, Definitions, Ordinary, Reason, Things

Our general repression of matters disgusting prevents us facing up to a serious health problem. If we are the 'god that shits,' then we are in full flight from ourselves. I even wonder whether religion itself and the whole idea of a god is produced by our self-disgust.

General, Ideas, Matter, Prevents, Problem, Self

Tolerating somebody else's beliefs is not failing to criticize them. It's not persecuting them for having those beliefs. That is absolutely important. You should not persecute people for their beliefs. It doesn't mean you can't criticize their beliefs.

Important, Mean, People, Persecute, Somebody