“Philosophers’ Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.”

If I know better than you know what I am up to, it is only because I spend more time with myself than you do.

We live in a world that is subjectively open. And we are designed by evolution to be “informavores”, epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world, the better to make decisions about our subjectively open future.

You can’t get through seminary and come out believing in God!

There are no forces on this planet more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism.

The best thing about saying thank goodness in place of thank God this that here really are lots of ways of repaying your debt of goodness – by setting to create more of it, for the benefit of those to come.

Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making mistakes; you actually want to make them – if only to give you something clear and detailed to fix.

Most people in the West who say they believe in God actually believe in belief in God.

YES we have a soul but it’s made of lots of tiny robots.

I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.

The earth has grown a nervous system, and it’s us.

The only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it.

Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.

I’m the guy who reputedly denies that people experience colors or pains, and thinks that thermostats think — just ask my critics.

No matter how smart you are, you’re smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.

I am inclined to think that nothing could matter more than what people love. At any rate, I can think of no value that I would place higher. I would not want to live in a world without love.

Thanks to technology, what almost anybody can do has been multiplied a thousandfold, and our moral understanding about what we ought to do hasn’t kept pace.

It would be great to be able to pass on to someone all of the successes, the failures, and the knowledge that one has had. To help someone, avoid all the fire, pain and anxiety would be wonderful.

Study people’s success stories hard. Study their failures even harder.

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.

Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.

Every time I’ve failed, people had me out for the count, but I always come back.

Fear dominates most people’s lives. Fear of loss. Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown. Fear of loneliness.

Never give up! Failure and rejection are only the first step to succeeding.

I think everyone has a certain kind of formula in their life. When you deviate from that formula, you’re going to fail big or you’re gonna win big.