Richard Rorty Quotes

Well, What There Ought To Be Is An International Labor Organization, A Confederation Of The Trade Unions Of All The Countries Speaking For The Workers Who Are Competing With One Another, And Talking About The Difference In Wage Levels Between, Say, Europe And Indonesia.

[walt] Whitman And [humanist Educator John] Dewey Tried To Substitute Hope For Knowledge. They Wanted To Put Shared Utopian Dreams - Dreams Of An Ideally Decent And Civilized Society - In The Place Of Knowledge Of God's Will, Moral Law, The Laws Of History, Or The Facts Of Science.... As Long As We Have A Functioning Political Left, We Still Have A Chance To Achieve Our Country, To Make It The Country Of Whitman's And Dewey's Dreams.

I Think That A Good Left Is A Party That Always Thinks About The Future And Doesn't Care Much About Our Past Sins.

The Usual Picture Of Socrates Is Of An Ugly Little Plebeian Who Inspired A Handsome Young Nobleman To Write Long Dialogues On Large Topics.

I Think You Can Have A Left That Isn't Culturally Conservative Talking About Lunch-bucket Issues.

I Illustrate With A Quotation From The Atheist Philosopher Richard Rorty, Who Died Recently And Is, I Suspect, Now Having A Lengthy Conversation With His Maker. Rorty Argued That Secular Professors Ought “to Arrange Things So That Students Who Enter As Bigoted, Homophobic Religious Fundamentalists Will Leave College With Views More Like Our Own.

Academic Disciplines Are Subject To Being Overtaken By Attacks Of "knowingness"- A State Of Mind And Soul That Prevents Shudders Of Awe And Makes One Immune To Enthusiasm.

Had There Been No Plato, The Christians Would Have Had A Harder Time Selling The Idea That All God Really Wanted From Us Was Fraternal Love.

What Sort Of World Can We Prepare For Our Great Grandchildren?

Truthfulness Under Oath Is, By Now, A Matter Of Our Civic Religion, Our Relation To Our Fellow Citizens Rather Than Our Relation To A Nonhuman Power.

Every Government, Left Or Right, Always Engages In Moral Crusades. What Else Are They Supposed To Do? Especially When They Make War; Any War Has To Be A Moral Crusade.

My Principal Motive Is The Belief That We Can Still Make Admirable Sense Of Our Lives Even If We Cease To Have... An Ambition Of Transcendence.