Stanley Cavell Quotes

The achievement of happiness requires not the satisfaction of our needs but the examination and transformation of those needs.

I know how to give the meaning of a word but not how to give the intention of a word.

One impulse of photography, as immediate as its impulse to extend the visible, is to theatricalize its subjects. The photographer's command, Watch the birdie! is essentially a stage direction.

I don't run away from the idea of philosophy as seductive. I want the sentences to be prose but intense prose, to show that, like life, thinking is not linear.

Can human beings change? The humor, and the sadness, of remarriage comedies can be said to result from the fact that we have no good answer to that question.

I try to keep my voice in writing, and I think that's why I get so many complaints about how I write.

Philosophy is the education of grown-ups.

(Can human beings change? The humor, and the sadness, of remarriage comedies can be said to result from the fact that we have no good answer to that question.)