Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker
Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 1 “Explaining the Very Improbable”
Source: Mars and its Canals (1906), Chapter XXXII, Conclusion
Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker
Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 1 “Explaining the Very Improbable”
Athenaeus book Deipnosophistae
VI, 23, referring to mining operations.
Deipnosophistae (2nd century)
Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas
Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)
Context: I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form of inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air, or cannot read because I am blind, or cannot understand the darker pages of Hegel, it would be eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act.
Alberto Moravia (1907–1990) Italian writer and journalist
Un male incerto provoca inquietudine, perché, in fondo, si spera fino all'ultimo che non sia vero; ma un male sicuro, invece, infonde per qualche tempo una squallida tranquillità.
Source: Il Disprezzo (Milano: Bompiani, 1954) p. 77; Angus Davidson (trans.) Contempt (New York: New York Review of Books, 2005) p. 75.
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer
Playboy interview (1973)
Context: I couldn't survive my own pessimism if I didn't have some kind of sunny little dream. … Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia. That's what I want for me.
Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher
I. On the Theoretical Understanding of Human Conduct
On Human Conduct (1975)
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis