Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.

Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics.

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

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

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

Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.

A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental act of the will.

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

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

fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism--something it is like for the organism.

Altruism itself depends on a recognition of the reality of other persons, and on the equivalent capacity to regard oneself as merely one individual among many.

...political realism is the way forward for any system that is genuinely for humanity or for the interest and advancement of the people of this world.

A basket of ripe fruit is holier than any prayer book.

The sun burnt every day. It burnt time.

Her smile is the simplest miracle that she can create anytime.

She was not filled up with the sight of him, the way she had seen her sisters fill up, like silk balloons, like wineskins. Instead, he seemed to land heavily within her, like a black stone falling.

Billy [Corgan] and I used to spend quite a lot of time together in Los Angeles, when I first moved there.

You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.

The constant need to move on, and to document progress, in normal schools means that education tends to be cut up into bite sized task.

I think about my own daily choices every day in terms of how to find happiness.

The final release point for the fastball is the tips of your fingers.