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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ask with Confidence, listen with humility.

Desire is a powerful boat herding anchors and chains in the middle of the night.

Despair is a wholly selfish response to fortune’s slings and arrows.

Dave learned that Death is the opposite of peace: it’s struggle, it’s ugly, it’s horrific, it’s dirty. And ultimately, Death is emptiness.

Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.

If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.

Real religion is no religion at all.

As my mom always said, 'You'd rather have smile lines than frown lines.'

If you gave wings to a cat, it would not condescend to be a bird. It would be an angel.

I'm very leery of show business, having been in Los Angeles for the last 10 years. Buzz is a dangerous thing that I've heard applied to a lot of people that I've since not heard of again.