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 sub specie aeternitatis [from eternity's point of view] there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.

Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.

If I thought that everything I did was determined by my circumstancse and my psychological condition, I woudl feel trapped.

What is it like to be a bat? What is it like for a bat to be a bat?

Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.

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