Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about ordinary language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.

Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics.

Philosophy is the childhood of the intellect, and a culture that tries to skip it will never grow up.

Materialism is incomplete even as a theory of the physical world, since the physical world includes conscious organisms among its most striking occupants.

Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.

What is it like to be a bat? What is it like for a bat to be a bat?

Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.

A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental act of the will.

Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions.

Perhaps the belief in God is the belief that the universe is intelligible, but not to us.

fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism--something it is like for the organism.

Just because you are a nice guy, doesn’t mean you are a good man.

Sometimes being too nice is dangerous, you have to show your mean side once in a while to avoid getting hurt.

The Fed has got to become a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs.

I look fine. I've had no surgery apart from an operation I had decades ago to remove the fat under my eyes. My mum looked 30 when she was 60, so I guess I owe it all to genes and hair dye.

The mind needs stories as much as the body needs food. There are junk stories and more nourishing ones. The food we eat becomes our bodies, assimilated stories form our identities

The stars you see at night are the unblinking eyes of sleeping elephants, who sleep with one eye open to best keep watch over us.

I am a black diamond, unfaceted. Black diamonds are rare, hard to cut, and therefore uncommercial.

There's a great quote from Henry Kissinger, which I became aware of from reading [Joseph] Heller's Good As Gold. He said: 'Every great achievement was a dream before it became a reality.'

Leadership is not a rank or a position, it is a choice - a choice to look after the person to the left of us & the person to the right of us.

A product can be quickly outdated, but a successful brand is timeless.