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" 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
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" If we find it hard to believe that winning millions might not be so lucky after all, we just don't have a good enough imagination. If I fantasise about winning the lottery, it doesn't take long before all sorts of worrisome potential consequences occur to me. "
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" The reason Buddhism can be so naturalised is because, stripped of its supernatural elements, its core teachings can be giving a sound, secular philosophical interpretation. In other words, it becomes a religion acceptable to the contemporary, naturalistic mind only when it ceases to be a religion. "
Julian Baggini
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" 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. "
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" Atheists should point out that life without God can be meaningful, moral and happy. "
Julian Baggini
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" Untested assumptions and lazy habits of thought can be shown up, once put in a spotlight of a different hue. "
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" Indeed, without emotion it seems unlikely we can even have morality. "
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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
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Live
" 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. "
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Fear
Bad
Yesterday
" 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
Us
Live
Home
" Most people believe, more or less, that the value of a human life is the same, irrespective of where on the planet it happens to find itself. But, of course, not every life has the same value for us. "
Julian Baggini
Believe
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" 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 is such a thing as fanaticism, it is always wrong, and if you disagree, you're wrong too. "
Julian Baggini
Disagree
Always
You
" If philosophy is to be a valuable part of life, we have to appreciate it for its own sake, and not just for what it's done for us lately. "
Julian Baggini
Done
Philosophy
Life
" Being virtuous is wonderful thing, but feeling virtuous is a shortcut to vice. "
Julian Baggini
Feeling
Virtuous
Wonderful
" Trade has played a vital role in the social evolution of humankind. It allowed people to specialise, which raises both skill levels and efficiency. It brought people from different lands together, co-operating rather than competing over resources. "
Julian Baggini
Evolution
People
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" Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural. "
Julian Baggini
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" Prayer provides an opportunity to remind oneself of how one should be living, our responsibilities to others, our own failings, and our relative good fortune, should we have it. This is, I think, a pretty worthwhile practice and it is not something you can only do if you believe you are talking to an unseen creator. "
Julian Baggini
You
Opportunity
Prayer
" Daily life is better when it involves interactions with real people who have a personal investment in their labour, like shopkeepers, than it is with someone 'just doing my job' or the infernal self-checkout machine. "
Julian Baggini
People
Job
Daily Life
" 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
" If I hammer my own thumb while doing some DIY, it's not nice, but it's not the end of the world. To care obsessively about similar levels of discomfort in animals seems to be a case of mistaken moral priorities. "
Julian Baggini
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" 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
" I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible. "
Julian Baggini
Broken
Hard
Ethics
" 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
" We can take suffering to be an opportunity to learn and to grow. But if we are honest, we should remember that this is making the best of a bad job, and that minimising suffering takes priority over optimising its outcome. "
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Job
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" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" If there's one thing that makes me cynical, it's optimists. They are just far too cynical about cynicism. If only they could see that cynics can be happy, constructive, even fun to hang out with, they might learn a thing or two. "
Julian Baggini
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" Being a good neighbour is about compassion, which is as warm-blooded as justice is cool-headed. "
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Compassion
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