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The quest for other, and better, forms of life, society, technology, ethics, and law may not reveal that they are actually elsewhere; but it may in the long run help us to make some of them actual on earth.

— Lewis White Beck

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More quotes by Lewis White Beck

If you believe that you are not a machine, but that I am (then) I do not know why you are reading this book".

In order to know and to act, it is necessary both to see and to think.

Lewis White Beck Essays on Kant and Hume (1978)

Whatever plausibility the machine theory has- and it has much plausibility and is a rich model for psychology and neurology- it gains by being associated with a self-exemption clause.

Myth, religion and now science-fiction with their tales of benevolent and malevolent extraterrestrial beings are commentaries on the human condition. I believe even responsible scientific speculation and expensive technology of space exploration in search for other life are the peculiarly modern equivalent of angeology and Utopia or of demonology and apocalypse.

It is not my place to tell you whether there is indefeasible ignorance of ultimate reality. I am ignorant of whether there is or is not. But you should think of these things because there are no things more important, though there are no questions more difficult or less answerable. But one's whole life may be changed if one changes his mind about these questions.

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy. If you are cruel you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.

Cary Grant Love – That’s All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About (1964)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lewis White Beck (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.