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41 " Goya’s full motto for his etching is, ‘Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the source of her wonders. "
― Simon Blackburn , Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy
42 " It is one thing to be the common-or-garden villain who says, "I don't care if I have wronged you by breaking my word or stealing your goods." But it is another to achieve the rather extraordinary pitch of villainy, which says, "I don't even recognize that you have a complaint." A society in which people are incapable of recognizing others as having a complaint, whatever they do, would be one without an ethic - but for that very reason, it would be hard to recognize it as a society at all. "
43 " literature is but the shadow of good talk "
― Simon Blackburn , Plato's Republic
44 " seperate morality from its effects, and you will see that everyone regards ias a nuisance, an annoying brake on their freedom of action. "
45 " belief is to knowledge as shadow is to original "
― Simon Blackburn
46 " What do we mean when we ask what the point is? Reflection bakes no bread, but then neither does architecture, music, art, history, or literature. "
47 " Que sais-je?’—what do I know? "
48 " what Russell called a ‘logical construction out of aggregates of facts. (This does not mean that all statements about the average are sensible or useful: as has been said, the average person has one testicle and one breast.) "
49 " Leibniz thought that if we had a sufficiently logical notation, dispute and confusion would cease, and men would sit together and resolve their disputes by calculation. "
50 " people. "
51 " ... consider the many ways of failing that await the poet who makes his or her own consciousness of emotions into the subject of a poem, instead of the emotion itself. "
― Simon Blackburn , Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning
52 " For he has found that even his senses deceive him, and it is "prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once". He puts to himself the objection that only madmen ("who say that they are dressed in purple when they are naked, or that their heads are made of earthenware, or that they are pumpkins or made of glass" -- madmen were evidently pretty colorful in the seventeenth century) deny the very obvious evidence of their senses. "
53 " Why does causation run always from past to future, or does it make sense to think that the future might influence the past? "
54 " Epicurus old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil? Cleanthes "
55 " An argument is valid when there is no way—meaning no possible way—that the premises, or starting points, could be true without the conclusion being true "
56 " An ethic gone wrong is an essential preliminary to the sweat-shop or the concentration camp and the death march. "
― Simon Blackburn , Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics