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" 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
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" Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural. "
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" Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world. "
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" Atheists should point out that life without God can be meaningful, moral and happy. "
Julian Baggini
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" The capacity to make free choices is not something we either have entirely or not at all. Rather, choices become freer the more they are the result of our own capacity to reflect on and assess facts and arguments. "
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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. "
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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. "
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" This is the deal: we are happy to single out people as superior just as long as they don't accept the description themselves. We want heroes and idols, but we also want egalitarianism, and that requires proclamations of humility from our gods. "
Julian Baggini
People
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" 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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Choose
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" I don't believe in God because certain reasons and arguments weigh more heavily in my mind than others, not because I have willfully decided to reject my creator, as many religious people seem to think. I could no more simply decide to believe in God than I could decide to like beetroot, just like that. "
Julian Baggini
Believe
More
God
" Philosophy has to be enquiring; it can take nothing on faith, and its methods are based not on the blind acceptance of authority, but on establishing truths by reason and argument. "
Julian Baggini
Faith
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Acceptance
" Anger clearly has its proper place at work, which is neither wholly absent nor ever present. The manager who is an emotional blank is just as hard to work for as the volcanic boss, and both can do great harm by setting an unhelpful example for what kind of emotional expression is expected and accepted. "
Julian Baggini
Present
Anger
Boss
" 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
" 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
Healthy
Live
" Economics is uncertain because its fundamental subject matter is not money but human action. That's why economics is not the dismal science, it's no science at all. "
Julian Baggini
Why
Money
Science
" Waiting is so unusual that many of us can't stand in a queue for 30 seconds without getting out our phones to check for messages or to Google something. "
Julian Baggini
Google
Phones
Without
" 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
" 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
" If there is an art of living, it is not something that can be taught timelessly. We have lessons to learn from Aristotle et al, for sure, but not if we simply uproot them from their epoch and stamp them into 21st-century soil. "
Julian Baggini
Living
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Art
" 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
People
Think
" The very act of questioning whether you exist proves you do, because you must be there for the doubt to be entertained in the first place. "
Julian Baggini
Questioning
You
Doubt
" If we now find ourselves looking down on the cheap and convenient, it is only because we now have better things which are affordable. "
Julian Baggini
Cheap
Down
Looking
" Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality. "
Julian Baggini
Without
Morality
Seems
" 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
" Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice. "
Julian Baggini
Feeling
Virtuous
Wonderful
" Being able and willing to complain is what makes us rational and moral animals, capable of seeing and articulating the difference between how things are and how they should be. "
Julian Baggini
Seeing
Animals
Us
" We can't control whether we are rewarded for our endeavours, with cash or recognition. It is not up to us how much cash or time we get on Earth, but it is down to us how we spend it. "
Julian Baggini
Down
Time
Recognition
" The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success. "
Julian Baggini
Success
Chance
Change
" Any celebration meal to which guests are invited, be they family or friends, should be an occasion for generous hospitality. "
Julian Baggini
Friends
Family
Meal
" Many people are never happier than when they get the opportunity to complain, while others are deeply unhappy with how things are but just accept the fact. Complaint occurs when we refuse to accept that things are wrong and we do something about it, even if that something is simply articulating our unease. "
Julian Baggini
Accept
Opportunity
People
" People do care where their food, or other goods, comes from, not merely if the price is right. And that means no business can afford to ignore the impacts their buying practices have on producers and on the perceptions and choices of consumers. "
Julian Baggini
Food
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