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Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper QUOTES

Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper QUOTES

1 " Like the character Moliere who discovered to his astonishment that he had been speaking prose all his life, I discovered to my astonishment that I had been immersed in philosophical problems all my life. And I had been drawn into the same problems as great philosophers by the same felt need to make sense of the world...The chief difference between me and them, of course, was that whereas they had something to offer by way of solutions to the problems, I had failed even to formulate very rich or sophistocated versions of the problems, let alone work my way through to defensible solutions for them. In consequence I fell on their work like a starving man on food, and it has done a geat deal to nourish and sustain me ever since. "

― Bryan Magee , Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper

2 " Human knowledge as it actually is and can only ever be is not a revelation of something objectively and timelessly true, an assured grasp of something existing 'out there' independently of ourselves. It is what we have the best grounds at any given time for believing. Because this is what it is, it does indeed provide the best possible basis for our suppositions and actions. But it always remains our belief, our, conjecture, our hypothesis, our theory; and as such, fallible - and also, as such, a creation of the human mind. "

― Bryan Magee , Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper