Thomas Nagel

“The fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism.”

“Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.”

“The world is an astonishing place, and the idea that we have in our possession the basic tools needed to understand it is no more credible now than it was in Aristotle's time.”

“If we tried to rely entirely on reason, and pressed it hard, our lives would become impossible.”

“The absurd is the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt.”

“Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to a comprehensive naturalism that relies only on the resources of physical science.”

“Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.”

“Each of us has a primary attachment to his own personal circumstances, desires, and projects.”

“Human beings are small and their lives are short. They are also, even the best of them, ridiculously fallible.”

“The capacity for transcendence is the source of the most important and distinctive features of our humanity.”

“It is a cosmic joke that we are finite beings with infinite aspirations.”

“Subjective reality is just as real as physical reality.”

“Moral luck is the paradoxical phenomenon that we seem to be correctly treated as objects of moral judgment for things that are not in our control.”

“The problem is not that we are too concerned with ourselves, but that we are not concerned enough with others.”

“A being who is locked into a single point of view, even a god, could not have a complete grasp of reality.”