Quotes by Julian Baggini

About Julian Baggini:

Julian Baggini is a British philosopher, and the author of several books about philosophy written for a general audience. He wrote The Pig that Wants to be Eaten and 99 other thought experiments (2005) and is co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Philosophers' Magazine. He was awarded his PhD in 1996 from University College London for a thesis on the philosophy of personal identity. He contributes to a variety of newspapers, magazines and BBC radio.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Perhaps the biggest myth about cynicism is that it deepens with age. I think what really happens is that experience painfully rips away layers of scales from our eyes, and so we do indeed become more cynical about many of the things we naively accept...

Julian Baggini

Anger clearly has its proper place at work, which is neither wholly absent nor ever present. The manager who is an emotional blank is just as hard to work for as the volcanic boss, and both can do great harm by setting an unhelpful example for what k...

Julian Baggini

One reason why it has become harder to promote the beneficial side of emotions such as anger is that the moral vocabulary of good and bad has been replaced by the self-help lexicon of positive and negative thinking.

Julian Baggini

Too often, complaint is not about principled objection on moral grounds, but opportunistic objection on grounds of self-interest. To rectify this, we need to work on mastering the art of complaint.

Julian Baggini

If there is an art of living, it is not something that can be taught timelessly. We have lessons to learn from Aristotle et al, for sure, but not if we simply uproot them from their epoch and stamp them into 21st-century soil.

Julian Baggini

Nature deals the cards without thought or care, and there is no point in blaming the dealer. All we can do is make the best of the hands we have been dealt.

Julian Baggini

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.

Julian Baggini

Any celebration meal to which guests are invited, be they family or friends, should be an occasion for generous hospitality.

Julian Baggini

Stress means something different if it is the result of rewarding work rather than struggling to keep the family out of debt.

Julian Baggini

People do care where their food, or other goods, comes from, not merely if the price is right. And that means no business can afford to ignore the impacts their buying practices have on producers and on the perceptions and choices of consumers.

Julian Baggini

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 b...

Julian Baggini

When you try to cool down hot emotions, what tends to happen is that you end up either repressing them or losing them altogether. Neither is desirable. Without emotion, much social interaction loses its meaning or changes for the worse.

Julian Baggini

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.

Julian Baggini

Looking out over the port of Dover, with the endless steam of boats coming in and out, every British citizen is reminded that belonging here has never been about blood or genes. It's simply about being at home on this discrete island and being aware ...

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.

Julian Baggini

Seek first what is true and of value, and then whatever happiness follows will be of the appropriate quantity and, more importantly, quality.

Julian Baggini

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

Julian Baggini

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

Christmas is a rare occasion when we are reminded that we have obligations to people we did not choose to be related to, and that love is not just a spontaneous feeling but something we sometimes really have to work at, with people we may not even mu...

Julian Baggini

In my experience, those who make the biggest fuss about not spending much at Christmas are generally the ones who buy what they want and eat where they want 12 months a year.

Julian Baggini

Author Bio

  • NameJulian Baggini
  • DescriptionEnglish philosopher
  • Born1968
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Writer