The only answer to the question of the meaning of life has to begin from the fact of our human finitude, of our vulnerability and our fallibility.

Just to say "Well, God is dead" in one breath is to say, in another, that nothing means anything. This is the moment of nihilism. Nihilism is the affirmation of meaninglessness.

It is so ridiculous to limit oneself to one version of the truth.

It's complicated. On the one hand we're killer apes, and on the other hand we have this metaphysical longing.

I think that when people are at their best, when they are thinking, reflecting, cogitating, then they are doing philosophy. So I don't see philosophy as an academic enterprise.

Philosophy, for me, is a way of relearning to look at the world, a world that is familiar to us, that we know, that is shared by all human beings and also by nonhuman beings.

Peace is nothing more than the regulation of the psycho-political economy of awe and reverential fear, of using the threat of terror in order to bind citizens to the circuit of their subjection.

We might even define the human as a dynamic process produced by a series of identifications and misidentifications with animality.

The current situation with regard to theory is odd and maybe defined by a paradox.

The philosopher is someone who doesn't know, but who wants to find out.

That is to say, politics is essentially about the management of fear, an economy of fear, continually adjusting the level of fear to produce the right level of affect in the citizenry.

That just the way it is. Some things will never change. That's just the way it is. But don't you believe them.

Define yourself. Define your passion.Define your success.

Let me propose that if your beliefs or convictions matter more to you than people - if they require you to act as though you were a worse person than you are - you may have lost perspective.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy.

No matter how good you are, you still need grace to get out of the material world. You can be a yogi or a monk or a nun, but without God's grace you still can't make it.

Success in the affairs of life often serves to hide one's abilities, whereas adversity frequently gives one an opportunity to discover them.

Jazz groups have to make a living any way.

I found my personal style in black humor and mixing funny things with very touching ones - like trying to force people to cry and smile almost at the same moment.

I'm not bloodthirsty, but...seriously, she killed you. She needs to be dead.

Someday she might replace whatever of her had gone away by some prosthetic device, a dress of a certain color, a phrase in a letter, another lover.