Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
David Deutsch • The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
Hannah Arendt wrote to Jaspers in 1949; it was that he had no character. Sartre said a very similar thing in an essay of 1944, speaking of Heidegger’s Nazism: ‘Heidegger has no character; there’s the truth of the matter.’ It is as if there was something about everyday human life that the great philosopher of everydayness did not get.
Sarah Bakewell • At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others
Her fault is not that she fails to get things right, but that she is not even trying.
Harry G. Frankfurt • On Bullshit
The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
Harry G. Frankfurt • On Bullshit
to participate in the great decisions of government. There was, Lippmann brooded, no “intrinsic moral and intellectual virtue to majority rule.” Lippmann’s disenchantment with democracy anticipated the mood of today’s elites. From the top, the public, and the swings of public opinion, appeared irrational and uninformed. The human material out of wh
... See moreMartin Gurri • Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium
The lack of any significant connection between a person’s opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions
Harry G. Frankfurt • On Bullshit
An impartial person is a good judge of many things, but not of all. He is not (for instance) a good judge of what it feels like to be partial.
G. K. Chesterton • The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books]
it’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time. The boundary—your personal moral line—is powerful, because you don’t cross it; if you have justified doing it once, there’s nothing to stop you doing it again.
Clayton M. Christensen • How Will You Measure Your Life?
Think of all the people who excuse their behavior—politicians, powerful CEOs, and the like—as “not technically illegal.” Think of the times that you’ve excused your own with “no one will know.” This is the moral gray area that our ego loves to exploit. Holding your ego against a standard (inner or indifferent or whatever you want to call it) makes
... See more