Author

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.

From Julian Baggini

It's not leftovers that are wasteful, but those who either don't know what to do with them or can't be bothered.

From Julian Baggini

Happiness is not the same as life satisfaction, while neither are identical to what we might call flourishing.

From Julian Baggini

Heathens are unredeemed outcasts from heaven who roam the planet without hope of surviving the deaths of their bodies. They may have values, but they are not secured by any divine source. Yet we embrace this because we think it represents the truth.

From Julian Baggini

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.

From Julian Baggini

It is true that legality is not morality, and sticking to the law is necessary for good citizenship, but it is not sufficient.

From Julian Baggini

If we now find ourselves looking down on the cheap and convenient, it is only because we now have better things which are affordable.

From Julian Baggini

Being a good neighbour is about compassion, which is as warm-blooded as justice is cool-headed.

From Julian Baggini

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.

From Julian Baggini

The greatest moral failing is to condemn something as a moral failing: no vice is worse than being judgmental.

From Julian Baggini

Julian Baggini

Notable Quotes

Authors with Similar Views

Joyce Meyer

Samuel Butler

Helen Keller

Rita Dove

Andrew J. Bernstein

Authors with Opposing Views

Abu Bakar Bashir

Albert Einstein

Andrew J. Bernstein

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Boyle Roche