Thomas Nagel Quotes
It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are supposed to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.
Quotes to Explore
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Time has lost all meaning in that nightmare alley of the Western world known as the American mind.
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You just try to play tough and focus point for point. Sounds so boring, but it's the right thing to do out there.
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Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do.
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I love speaking at schools. That's always my favorite because I wish I'd had someone who was like me come speak at my school.
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I live in a bus and go from place to place and sometimes feel very detached from what's going on.
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I actually have no style whatsoever. I'm the worst. I have people I talk to, and I say, 'Please tell me how to dress because I don't know what I'm doing.' The biggest thing for me is my mom. I'm like, 'Mom, do I look good?' If she says yes, I'm good to go.
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Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.
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Machines built by human beings they will function correctly if we provide them with a very specific environment. But if that environment is changed, they won't function at all.
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If I've inadvertently become some sort of role model for failed comedians, then it's really backfired very badly on me.
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I had a suit made for me when I was five. It was double-breasted, mohair and purple. My mother was very particular about clothing - it always used to have to go back into the plastic and it used to drive me insane.
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Life would have been absolutely empty without imagination.
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Patience is the secret to good food.
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Our Heavenly Father is far more merciful, infinitely more charitable, than even the best of his servants, and the Everlasting Gospel is mightier in power to save than our narrow finite minds can comprehend.
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My coherence-creating groups are going to put out all this mischief-mongership in the world.
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You reduce illegal immigration by making it harder to get jobs here, or easier to get jobs south of the border. This idea that we can't pass an immigration law until we hit some imaginary security target is just a way to derail reform.
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Working on 'Drive', a lot of fun. This is Tim Minear whom I've worked with before on 'Firefly' of course. He called me up and said, 'I've got a part for you that you will love,' and I love Tim's writing. I love his stories. I love his characters, his dialogue. He has a knack for reveals and he has a knack for moments.
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What can be said for a man who would allow his home to be invaded by strangers who demanded they be fed, clothed, housed and granted the rights of the first-born? What can be said for a ruling elite that permits this to be done to the nation, and who celebrate it as a milestone of moral progress?
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This is something you can never erase. It leaves a scar on you.
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Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering.
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I hate changes of administrations, because I have all my villains in place and they are all taken away and replaced with faceless wonders nobody knows.
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Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.
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Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.
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It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection. We are supposed to abandon this naïve response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible probability of being true.
