Leszek Kolakowski Quotes

#1. Is it not reasonable to suspect that if existence were pointless and the universe devoid of meaning, we would never have achieved not only the ability to imagine otherwise, but even the ability to entertain this very thought - to wit, that existence is pointless and the universe devoid of meaning.

Leszek Kolakowski

#2. We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.

Leszek Kolakowski

#3. We really have no right to reproach God for having created the world. For Him it was the only possible way of escaping from the accursed void in which He found himself.

Leszek Kolakowski

#4. For any given doctrine that one wants to believe, there is never a shortage
of arguments by which to support it.

Leszek Kolakowski

#5. A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.

Leszek Kolakowski

#6. I was then a young and omniscient student (alas, I was soon to lose both these virtues).

Leszek Kolakowski

#7. Extremely unlikely events occur every moment and it is not a priori unthinkable that the evolution of life should be due to mere chance than that a particular order in a pack of cards should result from mechanical shuffling.

Leszek Kolakowski

#8. I am not a Kant expert and no Kantian but, I should say, a Kant sympathizer - especially where conflicts between Kantian and so-called historicist thinking are concerned, both in epistemology and in ethics.

Leszek Kolakowski

#9. No victory is irreversible, no defeat is definitive. That is what makes life worth living.

Leszek Kolakowski