Nehamas Quotes & Sayings

Done so many evil things in the name of love, it's a crying shame. I never did see no fire that could put out a flame. — Bob Dylan

Nicias, a famous general and Socrates' friend, warns the company: I don't think you know what it is like to get involved in a discussion with Socrates. Whatever the subject you begin with, he will continue to press the argument and he will not stop until until he has made you give a general account of yourself. You will have to account not only for your present mode of life, but also for everything you have done in the past. And even when he has made you do all of this, Socrates will not let you go until he has examined each question deeply and thoroughly. — Alexander Nehamas

We deny that it is fun to be saving. It is fun to be prodigal. Go to the butterfly, thou parsimonious sluggard; consider her ways and get wise. — Franklin P. Adams

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters. — George Bernard Shaw

Was slipping, and his face had gone as white as my own. He looked down again, avoiding my stricken gaze. "I suppose all I was wondering," he murmured, "was ... was he ... was he different from me?" I saw him bite his lip as though wishing the words unsaid, but it was far too late — Diana Gabaldon

I had actually finished the manuscript of 'The Wild Trees' and turned it in to Random House when all of a sudden word came. Michael Taylor and his colleague, Chris Atkins, another explorer, have just knocked one out of the park. They found the world's tallest tree. The tree is named Hyperion, 379.1 feet tall. — Richard Preston

But is eternity an alternative to life? Isn't it, on the contrary, the case that it is when one wants everything to be eternal that one most loves life and the world. — Alexander Nehamas

You're going to women? Don't forget your whip! — Friedrich Nietzsche

This is a major, wide-ranging, and comprehensive book. A philosophical investigation that is also a literary and historical study, Truth and Truthfulness asks how and why we have come to think of accuracy, sincerity, and authenticity as virtues. Bernard Williams' account of their emergence is as detailed and imaginative as his defense of their importance is spirited and provocative. Williams asks hard questions, and gives them straightforward and controversial answers. His book does not simply describe and advocate these virtues of truthfulness; it manifests them. — Alexander Nehamas

I will tell you why I became a philosopher. I became a philosopher because I wanted to be able to talk about many, many things, ideally with knowledge, but sometimes not quite the amount of knowledge that I would need if I were to be a specialist in them. It allows you to be many different things. And plurality and complexity are very, very important to me. — Alexander Nehamas

Just as we can't fully explain what is beautiful, so we can't fully explain why we are friends with someone in a way that will make the grounds of our attraction obvious to another - and even to ourselves. Our efforts always leave something out. And it is what is always left out that we try to gesture toward when we say that it is not something ABOUT our friends that we love but our friends THEMSELVES. But the self that we love is always just one one step behind whatever we can actually articulate. And so we are faced with a choice between saying something that seems informative but is never enough of an explanation ('loyal, practical, unworldly and so on') and saying something else that seems like an explanation but is completely uninformative ('the individual, in the uniqueness and integrity of his or her individuality'). — Alexander Nehamas

Develop your pawns or Hulk will smash. — Jonathan Lethem

We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it's so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board). — Jonathan Haidt

So long as we find anything beautiful, we feel that we have not yet exhausted what [life] has to offer [ ... ] That forward-looking element is ... inseparable from the judgment of beauty. — Alexander Nehamas

An aware person is in tune with all the powers of God and makes them his or her own. — Donald Curtis

Happiness comes the way the wind blows. — Mikhail Lermontov

Happiness depends not on what happens in your life, but how you live your life. — Debasish Mridha