Once we see an aspect of what we or someone else does as something that happens, we lose our grip on the idea that it has been done and that we can judge the doer and not just the happening.

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.

Nations are as equal as so many madmen or drunkards.

We're all put to the test... but it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?

I thought even if the show only lasted a year, it would be fun.

It is disgusting to pick your teeth; what is vulgar is to use a gold toothpick.

A songwriter's supreme challenge is being complex and simple at the same time

But you don't get into a business because of personal tastes.

A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight.

The greatest threat to compassion is the temptation to succumb to fantasies of moral superiority.

There isn't a theologian in the world who can argue with me on this. God has no gender. If that's the case, then everything needs to be rewritten now, right now.

We are always in the presence of God, yet it seems to me that those who pray are in His presence in a very different sense.