Leszek Kolakowski Quotes & Sayings

Extremely unlikely events occur every moment and it is not a priori unthinkable that the evolution of life should be due to mere chance than that a particular order in a pack of cards should result from mechanical shuffling. — Leszek Kolakowski

We really have no right to reproach God for having created the world. For Him it was the only possible way of escaping from the accursed void in which He found himself. — Leszek Kolakowski

Curiosity, that is, the separate drive to explore the world disinterestedly, without being stimulated by danger or physiological dissatisfaction, is, according to students of evolution, rooted in specific morphological characteristics of our species and thus cannot be eliminated from our minds as long as our species retains its identity. As both Pandora's most deplorable accident and the adventures of our progenitors in Paradise testify, curiosity has been a main cause of all the calamities and misfortunes that have befallen mankind, and it has unquestionably been the source of all its achievements. — Leszek Kolakowski

We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are. — Leszek Kolakowski

Is it not reasonable to suspect that if existence were pointless and the universe devoid of meaning, we would never have achieved not only the ability to imagine otherwise, but even the ability to entertain this very thought - to wit, that existence is pointless and the universe devoid of meaning. — Leszek Kolakowski

We were happy a hundred years ago. We knew that there were exploiters and exploited, wealthy and poor, and we had a perfect idea of how to get rid of injustice; we would expropriate the owners and turn the wealth over to the common good. We expropriated the owners and we created one of the most monstrous and oppressive social systems in world history. And we keep repeating that in principle everything was all right, only some unfortunate accidents slipped in and slightly spoiled the good idea. Now let us start afresh ... — Leszek Kolakowski

No victory is irreversible, no defeat is definitive. That is what makes life worth living. — Leszek Kolakowski

I am not a Kant expert and no Kantian but, I should say, a Kant sympathizer - especially where conflicts between Kantian and so-called historicist thinking are concerned, both in epistemology and in ethics. — Leszek Kolakowski

A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading. — Leszek Kolakowski

I was then a young and omniscient student (alas, I was soon to lose both these virtues). — Leszek Kolakowski

For any given doctrine that one wants to believe, there is never a shortage
of arguments by which to support it. — Leszek Kolakowski