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" Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice. "
Julian Baggini
Feeling
Virtuous
Wonderful
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" Stress means something different if it is the result of rewarding work rather than struggling to keep the family out of debt. "
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" Any celebration meal to which guests are invited, be they family or friends, should be an occasion for generous hospitality. "
Julian Baggini
Friends
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" No matter how convinced we are that someone is nasty, evil or just plain criminal, if they have not been convicted of any crime and support views that are upheld and defended by many law-abiding citizens, the only way to tackle them is through democratic debate. "
Julian Baggini
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" I don't feel proprietorial about the problems of philosophy. History has taught us that many philosophical issues can grow up, leave home and live elsewhere. "
Julian Baggini
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Home
" You don't choose what you believe moment to moment, but choices you have made do shape what you come to believe. "
Julian Baggini
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" Yesterday's news feeds our fear that our neighbours are more likely than not to be bad eggs: benefit fraudsters, bogus asylum seekers, paedophiles or jihadist terrorists. "
Julian Baggini
Fear
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Yesterday
" Dover's cliffs call to mind the Roman invasion; the Battle of Britain; our proximity to, yet difference from, mainland Europe; and international trade and exploration, both fair and exploitative. "
Julian Baggini
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" True respect means taking other people's beliefs seriously and assuming they are adult and intelligent enough to be able to cope with it if you tell them, clearly and civility, why you think they are totally, utterly and disastrously wrong. "
Julian Baggini
Respect
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Think
" In my experience, those who make the biggest fuss about not spending much at Christmas are generally the ones who buy what they want and eat where they want 12 months a year. "
Julian Baggini
Christmas
Eat
Experience
" Untested assumptions and lazy habits of thought can be shown up, once put in a spotlight of a different hue. "
Julian Baggini
Lazy
Assumptions
Thought
" 'That which does not kill me makes me stronger' is not a law of the universe. What it can be, if we so choose, is a resolution. "
Julian Baggini
Universe
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" The mark of a mature, psychologically healthy mind is indeed the ability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity, but only as much as there really is. Uncertainty is no virtue when the facts are clear, and ambiguity is mere obfuscation when more precise terms are applicable. "
Julian Baggini
Facts
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" The reason to be an atheist is not that it makes us feel better or gives us a more rewarding life. The reason to be an atheist is simply that there is no God and we would prefer to live in full recognition of that, accepting the consequences, even if it makes us less happy. "
Julian Baggini
God
Recognition
Live
" Accepting that the world is full of uncertainty and ambiguity does not and should not stop people from being pretty sure about a lot of things. "
Julian Baggini
People
Uncertainty
World
" Traditional arguments for the existence of God and contemporary attempts to use fine-tuning and cosmology to back up the case for his existence always strike me as kinds of games, since hardly anyone believes on the basis of these arguments at all. "
Julian Baggini
Games
Me
God
" There are many things you shouldn't measure. Don't, for example, try to measure how much you love your wife! "
Julian Baggini
You
Love
Example
" Science works because the phenomenon being described can be relied on to remain the same. Even in quantum physics, where phenomena are changed by observation, the way in which observation interferes is regular and falls within a limited range of possibilities. Human culture, however, has the nasty habit of never staying the same for very long. "
Julian Baggini
Science
Long
Culture
" Atheists should point out that life without God can be meaningful, moral and happy. "
Julian Baggini
God
Out
Happy
" Justice can only be dispensed when you have all the facts in front of you. "
Julian Baggini
You
Only
Justice
" The idea that there is a sharp boundary between our true inner selves and the outside world is pervasive but highly questionable. The boundaries of the self might well be more porous than we ordinarily think. "
Julian Baggini
Think
World
Self
" Life is full of what-ifs, many of which could easily have been realities, had just a few things been different. "
Julian Baggini
Been
Few
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" From time to time, it is worth wandering around the fuzzy border regions of what you do, if only to remind yourself that no human activity is an island. "
Julian Baggini
Time
Only
Worth
" Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural. "
Julian Baggini
Simply
Wrong
Matters
" Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality. "
Julian Baggini
Without
Morality
Seems
" It is true that legality is not morality, and sticking to the law is necessary for good citizenship, but it is not sufficient. "
Julian Baggini
Good
True
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" Wellbeing is a notion that entails our values about the good life, and questions of values are not ultimately scientific questions. "
Julian Baggini
Questions
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Good
" Perhaps the biggest myth about cynicism is that it deepens with age. I think what really happens is that experience painfully rips away layers of scales from our eyes, and so we do indeed become more cynical about many of the things we naively accepted when younger. "
Julian Baggini
Think
Experience
Become
" You should protest about the views of people you disagree with over major moral issues, and argue them down, but you should not try to silence them, however repugnant you find them. That is the bitter pill free speech requires us to swallow. "
Julian Baggini
Silence
People
Moral
" Metaphorical tone deafness is when people are unable to discern what is of value in something. I think I'm tone deaf to poetry, for instance. Despite having studied it into a second year of university, most of it just leaves me cold. "
Julian Baggini
Poetry
Deaf
People
" Big sporting events and spectacles might give the national morale a shot in the arm, but they are too transient and taste-specific to stand as robust symbols of nationhood. "
Julian Baggini
Events
Morale
Stand