A child's natural form of behavior is play, and in our aim to educate, play should be honored and preserved for as long past childhood as can be.

Given cognitive vulnerabilities, it would be convenient to have an arrangement whereby reality could tell us off; and that is precisely what science is. Scientific methodology is the arrangement that allows reality to answer us back.

Philosophy addresses, in a systematic and progress-making way, questions of deep concern to everyone.

I'm a Spinozist. I believe in reason. I think all the progress that we've made making this a better world have been because of reason and not religion. I think religion has been pulled along by reason and that's why we read The Bible now so differently, even believers.

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

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?

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