Thomas Nagel Quotes

Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.

Thomas Nagel

• Kind
• Universe
• Humility
• Temptation
• Intellectual
• Assuming

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Quotes to Explore

• You know you've made your mark when you're on the cover of a videogame.

  

  Gaines Adams
  • You
  • Know
  • Mark

• Entrenched scriptural literalism is, in my opinion, completely out of touch with reality.

  

  Malcolm Boyd
  • Reality
  • Opinion
  • Touch

• When you're with your club team, every week you have a performance to judge. But when you're with the national team, it's a little different because you might not play for three or four months at a time. Things change constantly.

  

  Landon Donovan
  • Time
  • Different
  • Change

• I enjoyed making this album a lot because of the knowledge we acquired over the last 3 years.

  

  Isaac Hanson Hanson
  • Knowledge
  • Years
  • Last

• Rand Paul does not like being compared to his father Ron any more than sons named Bush like to dance in their father's shadow, but the crucial difference is that while the Bushes all hail from the relative mainstream of the GOP, the Pauls have an ideological tributary virtually to themselves.

  

  Nancy Gibbs
  • Father
  • Dance
  • Shadow

• It's not the winter that bothers me – it's the summers.

  

  Walt Alston
  • Winter
  • Bothers
  • Summers

• I'm a black Catholic raised in Decatur, Georgia, which was very gang-infested. Then, I went to an all-white private high school and excelled in sports and wrote poetry, then played football at the University of Georgia, minoring in drama.

  

  Omari Hardwick
  • School
  • High
  • Black

• Hemingway's minimalism is based on the psychological mechanics of repression. An echo of his approach can be detected in a favorite trope of 1980s minimalists: a pattern of reference to dire secrets and hidden wounds these authors didn't realize they were supposed to have imagined.

  

  Madison Smartt Bell
  • Realize
  • Secrets
  • Hidden

• The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Nature
  • Animal
  • Rude

• The health effects of air pollution imperil human lives. This fact is well-documented.

  

  Eddie Bernice Johnson
  • Health
  • Air
  • Human

• From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent.

  

  H. P. Lovecraft
  • Greatest
  • Irony
  • Horrors

• To fund major cultural efforts, we must not rely alone on government and foundation patronage; if the farmer can spend for beer, he can pay for good entertainment which he can understand, which he can identify with and which will fortify his spirit.

  

  F. Sionil Jose
  • Good
  • Alone
  • Government

• He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.

  

  Lao Tzu
  • May
  • Powerful
  • Others

• It would be too frightening for me to consider myself a role model. But I like the idea of not being afraid of letting your imagination rule you, to feel the freedom of expression, to let creativity be your overwhelming drive rather than other things.

  

  Florence Welch Florence and the Machine
  • Freedom
  • Myself
  • Imagination

• If the Rolling Stones are playing a concert across town, that's not my audience anyways. But I do find that there's a lot of people coming back around to see me again.

  

  Henry Saint Clair Fredericks
  • People
  • Me
  • Find

• This position is untenable, and there can be no pause in the agitation for full political power and responsibility until these are granted to all the women of the nation.

  

  Florence Kelley
  • Women
  • Power
  • Political

• I didn't necessarily want to be famous growing up, but I knew I would be a good famous person because I'm not offended if somebody comes up to me and knows things about me and wants to engage me in a conversation.

  

  Nate Berkus
  • Up
  • Good
  • Growing

• To hear the Japanese plead for free trade is like hearing the word love on the lips of a harlot.

  

  Lane Kirkland
  • Free
  • Trade
  • Lips

• Made still a blund'ring kind of melody;Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin,Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in.Free from all meaning, whether good or bad,And in one word, heroically mad.

  

  John Dryden
  • Good
  • Bad
  • Free

• The electroencephalogram represents a continuous curve with continuous oscillations in which... one can distinguish larger first order waves with an average duration of 90 milliseconds and smaller second order waves of an average duration of 35 milliseconds.

  

  Hans Berger
  • First
  • Order
  • Waves

• I was still closeted, but from the day I decided to run for office, knowing that I was gay, I decided that I would, of course, still be closeted but that I would work very hard for gay rights. It would be totally dishonorable, being gay, not to do that. So I had that as kind of a secondary agenda.

  

  Barney Frank
  • Work
  • Day
  • Gay

• Give her not greatness. For great souls must stand Alone and lonely in this little world: Cleft rocks that show the great Creator's hand, Thither by earthquakes hurled.

  

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox
  • World
  • Great
  • Giving

• When I was studying photography, I became interested in conflict photojournalism, and that got me interested in lighting. Then I realized there was this amazing thing called cinematography where you could kind of tell more complete stories photographing for film. So I ended up going to AFI grad school for that.

  

  Rachel Morrison
  • Up
  • School
  • Kind

• Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.

  

  Thomas Nagel
  • Kind
  • Universe
  • Humility