Philosophy is the childhood of the intellect, and a culture that tries to skip it will never grow up.

Perhaps the belief in God is the belief that the universe is intelligible, but not to us.

The point is... to live one's life in the full complexity of what one is, which is something much darker, more contradictory, more of a maelstrom of impulses and passions, of cruelty, ecstacy, and madness, than is apparent to the civilized being who glides on the surface and fits smoothly into the world.

If we tried to rely entirely on reason, and pressed it hard, our lives and beliefs would collapse - a form of madness that may actually occur if the inertial force of taking the world and life for granted is somehow lost. If we lose our grip on that, reason will not give it back to us.

Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions.

Materialism is incomplete even as a theory of the physical world, since the physical world includes conscious organisms among its most striking occupants.

Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about ordinary language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.