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1 " Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocfence leads her to make a poor choice - the very worst - but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck - all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong. "
― Robert Rowland Smith , Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day
2 " The debt we owe our parents can never be squared, and jolly good too, because doing so would threaten to nullify all relationship, all emotional commerce between the two generations. Being in debt, just like being in credit, means an active interest applies between the two parties and, once the debt is taken care of, the interest is bound to wane. "
3 " Have we encroached upon an era in which the best we can hope for is not achieving proper sleep but remaining on standby? "
4 " No break in production is to be tolerated, for the world has been recast as a factory whose goal is output, whose made is efficiency, and in which "waking up", if it suggests having been asleep, is for wimps "
5 " Credit' comes from the Latin 'credere', 'to believe', for credit is the belief that the money you're borrowing will someday be returned, a belief that needs the future to function in. "
6 " Let's remember you can still go shopping without buying, because where buying is a matter of need, shopping is a question of want. "
7 " Given that Socrates was effectively assassinated by poison, you might think twice before accepting his invitation to breakfast. "
8 " The associations get only richer and more intense when you realise that the very concept of truth - the cornerstone of philosophy and religion alike, let alone law - also rests heavily on the meaning of waking up. And you don't need a philosopher to appreciate it, because there are clues to its dependency in everyday phrases such as 'waking up to the truth', 'my eyes were opened' and even 'wake up and smell the coffee'. If such phrases hint that waking up and truth are bedfellows of some sort, you need only go back to the ancient Greek for corroboration. There you'll find that the word truth is 'aletheia', from which in English we get the word for 'lethargy'. But see how the Greek word is 'a-letheia' rather than letheia - that is truth is the opposite of lethargy. And what is opposite of lethargy, if not waking up? "
9 " [Roland] Barthes turned the thable on the author, saying no only the a book needs a reader to wake it into life, but that in so doing the reader becomes nothing less that the author, who reveals in the book's hermeneutic possibilities, releases them and so becomes its own creator. "
10 " The psyche will do anything to avoid pain, and when faced with something traumatic, like having to pay, its instinct is to put it off - what Freud called 'Nachträglichkeit' or delayed effect. Credit card and psyche conspire to soften the blow of paying by staggering it over time. "
11 " Clothes exist to hide the pubic from the public and therefore make you socially acceptable. The irony is that, precisely because they are a prerequisite for social inclusion, wearing clothes has become almost more natural than being naked ... To that established irony, we can add a more subtle one. As anyone who has been on a date well knows, clothes aren't just about covering you up: while you need them to hide your sex, you want them to show your sexuality. "
12 " Getting ready is that point in the day when the rivalry between the two needs is likely to peak, because we are making transition from being at home and pleasing ourselves (ego) to going out and having to conform to a series of norms an conventions (superego). We become less ego and more superego with each button we fasten "
13 " Fate had seen that Colin’s character was tragic, and decided to follow suit. "
― Robert Rowland Smith , AutoBioPhilosophy: An intimate story of what it means to be human
14 " Nearly all difficulties in human affairs stem from poor contracting, that is, when expectations are not surfaced at the outset of whatever the joint effort might be. "
15 " The advantage of minimising our own activity is that it maximises the effect of powers larger than we are. "
16 " Knowing can be the enemy of being "
17 " you can’t be free to be right unless you can be free to be wrong. "
18 " Let’s remember you can still go shopping without buying, because where buying is a matter of need, shopping is a question of want. "
19 " make your ideal a reality or, slightly preferable, your reality ideal. "
20 " On the other hand, even if you’re as poor as a church mouse, isn’t it nice to be able to pay, to chuck some modest lump into the vast crater of debt to your parents that, as their child, you find yourself standing in? "
