If the best the roboticists can hope for is the creation of some crude, cheesy, second-rate, artificial consciousness, they still win.

If nobody cares, then it doesn't matter what happens to flowers.

To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant — inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.

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

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

The theoretical fruits of deliberate oversimplification through idealization are not to be denied... Reality in all its messy particularity is too complicated to theorize about, taken straight. The issue is, rather (since every idealization is a strategic choice), which idealizations might really shed some light... which will just land us... diverting fairy tales.

The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.