We totally misunderstand both his aims and his contribution if we try to read into Marx some anticipation of either the modest successes or the disastrous failures of those who later thought they were acting in his name.

Kant's aim was to develop a religion within the boundaries of mere reason (that is, reason unaided by special empirical revelation) and then to ask about existing ecclesiastical faith (especially about Christianity, and the Lutheran Christianity of his time and place) how this revealed faith must be interpreted if it is to be reconciled with reason, and even seen as a wider (though morally optional) extension of a religion of reason.

Since we cannot know too much about the long term effects of our particular lives, and since success and fame are not good measures of the value of what we have done, it should be enough for any of us that as far as we can tell, in some small way we have made humanity's future better rather than worse.

In the mid-1960s, as hard to believe as it may be now, choosing to go into academic philosophy was not an imprudent career choice. There were lots of academic jobs in philosophy then.

Fichte would identify all states of our minds with states of our body - perhaps not merely of our brain, but the whole body as an acting organism.

Philosophy is about getting the facts right, but it is also about thinking rightly about them. Philosophy is more about the latter than the former.

I am a one-trick pony. But I have worked hard at something I would have liked to do even if I weren't paid a penny for it, and made a good living at it. You can't be luckier than that in this life, no matter who you are or what you do.