To matter, to mind. ... What we mind is in our power, but whether we matter may not be - and there's the tragedy. ... Can anyone truthfully say, I don't matter and I don't mind?

I've got access to your mysterious body but not your mysterious soul. Souls seem to me the loneliest possibility of all.

There is nothing superstitious about forcing bad consequences for the hubris of paternalistic utopianism. Humanity should never be frozen into a vision of the best. A creative society must be willing to tolerate some degree of instability because creativity is inherently unstable.

Like mathematics and music and cosmology and philosophy, poetry, too, can "infinitize" us, granting us what immortality there is to be had in this mortal life. And all those who vibrate in harmony to language that itself vibrates to the harmonies of the infinite are entitled to inclusion among the "small group of people.

I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter "Nike" and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.

Philosophical progress changes what we take to be "intuitively" obvious, and this change covers up the tracks of the laborious arguments that preceded the changes. We don't see these changes, because we see with them.

It's something that's very often said that philosophy, as opposed to science, never makes any progress.