Bernard Williams Quotes
-
The majority of philosophers are totally humorless. That's part of their trouble.
-
Disagreement does not necessarily have to be overcome. It may remain an important and constitutive feature of our relations to others and also be seen as something that is merely to be expected in the light of the best explanations we have of how such disagreement arises.
-
The people I really do dislike are the morally unimaginative kind of evolutionary reductionists who, in the name of science, think they can explain everything in terms of our early hominid ancestors or our genes, with their combination of high-handed tone and disregard for history. Such reductive speculation encourages a really empty scientism.
-
Philosophy is altogether less pure now. It's been impurified by science and social science and history.
-
If there's one theme in all my work, it's about authenticity and self-expression. It's the idea that some things are, in some real sense, really you - or express what you and others aren't.
-
What a strange world this would be if we all had the same sense of humor.
-
A half-truth is usually less than half of that.
-
People have been predicting the death of philosophy since the 17th century. When I was a student, people were saying, 'We're in the last days of philosophy.' Then we were told in the '60s it would be replaced by sociology, then by literary criticism.
-
An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity.
-
I was interested in philosophy before I knew I was. That's to say, when I was at school, I used to argue with my friends about issues that turned out to be philosophical ones of some kind.
-
We grow a little every time we do not take advantage of somebody's weakness.