“Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality.”

—  Robert Nozick, book The Nature of Rationality

The Nature of Rationality (1993), Ch. V : Instrumental Rationality and Its Limits; Rationality's Imagination, p. 181
Context: Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives come to more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both…" by Robert Nozick?
Robert Nozick photo
Robert Nozick32
American political philosopher 1938–2002

Related quotes

Sister Nivedita photo

“Our daily life creates our symbol of God. No two ever cover quite the same conception.”

Sister Nivedita (1867–1911) Scots-Irish social worker, author, teacher and a disciple of Swami Vivekananda

Kali the Mother http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/ktm/ktm02.htm, Concerning Symbols (1900)

Darren Shan photo

“But in life we don't usually get to choose the time of our defining moments. We just have to stand and face them when they come, no matter what sort of a state we're in.”

Darren Shan book Sons of Destiny

Source: Sons of Destiny

Julian of Norwich photo

“This light is measured discreetly, needfully standing to us in the night. The light is cause of our life; the night is cause of our pain and of all our woe: in which we earn meed and thanks of God.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 83
Context: Our faith is a light by nature coming of our endless Day, that is our Father, God. In which light our Mother, Christ, and our good Lord, the Holy Ghost, leadeth us in this passing life. This light is measured discreetly, needfully standing to us in the night. The light is cause of our life; the night is cause of our pain and of all our woe: in which we earn meed and thanks of God. For we, with mercy and grace, steadfastly know and believe our light, going therein wisely and mightily.

Alan Keyes photo

“You can't have it both ways. Either our rights come from God, as our Declaration of Independence says, or they come from human choice. If they come from human choice, then our whole way of life is meaningless, it has no foundation.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

PBS&#x27; Newshour with Jim Lehrer, December 20, 1999. http://renewamerica.us/archives/media/interviews/99_12_20lehrer.htm. <br class="br">1999

Walt Disney photo

“Our most important aim is to develop definite personalities in our cartoon characters. We don't want them to be just shadows, for merely as moving figures they provoke no emotional response from the public. We invest them with life a caricature of life.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

Walt Disney interview, New York Times, (March 1938).

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk photo

“We do not consider our principles as dogmas contained in books that are said to come from heaven. We derive our inspiration, not from heaven, or from an unseen world, but directly from life.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

Statement (1 November 1937), as quoted in Atatürk: The Biography of the founder of Modern Turkey (2002) by Andrew Mango

James Allen photo

“Love and grief our hearts dividing,
With our tears His feet we bathe;
Constant still, in faith abiding,
Life deriving from His death.”

James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer

As reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 371

Adolf Hitler photo

“We have a great aim before us; a mighty work of reform of ourselves and our lives, of our life in common, of our economy, of our culture. This work does not disturb the rest of the world. We have enough to do in our own house.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: Speech in Gera (17 June 1934), quoted in The Times (26 September 1939), p. 9

Rollo May photo

“This passion for form is a way of trying to find and constitute meaning in life. And this is what genuine creativity is. Imagination, broadly defined, seems to me to be a principle in human life underlying even reason, for the rational functions, according to our definitions, can lead to understanding — can participate in the constituting of reality — only as they are creative. Creativity is thus involved in our every experience as we try to make meaning in our self-world relationship.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 7 : Passion for Form, p. 134

Julian of Norwich photo

“Our passing life that we have here in our sense-soul knoweth not what our Self is.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 46
Context: Our passing life that we have here in our sense-soul knoweth not what our Self is. Then shall we verily and clearly see and know our Lord God in fulness of joy. And therefore it behoveth needs to be that the nearer we be to our bliss, the more we shall long; and that both by nature and by grace. We may have knowing of our Self in this life by continuant help and virtue of our high Nature. In which knowing we may exercise and grow, by forwarding and speeding of mercy and grace; but we may never fully know our Self until the last point: in which point this passing life and manner of pain and woe shall have an end. And therefore it belongeth properly to us, both by nature and by grace, to long and desire with all our mights to know our Self in fulness of endless joy.

Related topics