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" Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality. "
Julian Baggini
Without
Morality
Seems
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" 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
Morality
" When you try to cool down hot emotions, what tends to happen is that you end up either repressing them or losing them altogether. Neither is desirable. Without emotion, much social interaction loses its meaning or changes for the worse. "
Julian Baggini
Changes
Cool
End
" Wellbeing is a notion that entails our values about the good life, and questions of values are not ultimately scientific questions. "
Julian Baggini
Questions
Values
Good
" 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
" 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
" The simplest and clearest motivation for taking animal welfare seriously is the recognition that pain is in and of itself a bad thing, and that to inflict significant amounts of it unnecessarily is wrong. "
Julian Baggini
Pain
Recognition
Animal
" 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
" It may not have the virtuous ring of the golden rule, but the maxim 'never say never' is one of the most important in ethics. "
Julian Baggini
Ethics
Say
Ring
" Progress is more of a challenge for the cynic but also more important and urgent, since for the optimist things aren't that bad and are bound to get better anyway. "
Julian Baggini
Challenge
Progress
Important
" Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right. "
Julian Baggini
Live
Knowledge
Go
" 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
" 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
Happy
Heroes
" Society needs both justice and compassion, a head and a heart, if it is to be civilised. "
Julian Baggini
Compassion
Heart
Justice
" True virtue would never liken its rewards to points on a loyalty card, not because it is its own reward, but because it is not something we should practice to accrue future benefits. "
Julian Baggini
Reward
Loyalty
Future
" 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
" It's not leftovers that are wasteful, but those who either don't know what to do with them or can't be bothered. "
Julian Baggini
Leftovers
Who
Either
" 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
" 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. "
Julian Baggini
Universe
Suffering
Believe
" Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural. "
Julian Baggini
Simply
Wrong
Matters
" 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
Difference
Battle
Mind
" 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
" Seek first what is true and of value, and then whatever happiness follows will be of the appropriate quantity and, more importantly, quality. "
Julian Baggini
True
Will
Happiness
" 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
Debate
Someone
Evil
" Trying to keep up with health advice can feel like surfing the Net for weather forecasts: what you find is always changing, often contradictory and rarely encouraging. "
Julian Baggini
Weather
You
Advice
" 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
" 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
" '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
Choose
Law
" 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
" The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives. "
Julian Baggini
True
World
You
" Nature deals the cards without thought or care, and there is no point in blaming the dealer. All we can do is make the best of the hands we have been dealt. "
Julian Baggini
Best
Hands
Thought