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. Writing barely differs from Talking and Reading. It appoints your hand while they engage your mouth and eyes respectively. The trio need the mind to combine sensible words from a meaningful arrangement of the 'simple' A B C to Z.

Olaotan Fawehinmi

#4. Eventually you realize that not all opposing viewpoints come from people who oppose you.

Robert Breault

#5. 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

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

Leszek Kolakowski

#7. Now sod off back to your own world, you motherless scum, and save your threats for those who care.

Darren Shan

#8. We were watching the first series recently, and it has a charm, a kind of amateur charm. At that point we didn't involve ourselves technically at all - we just messed about and told our jokes - and it looks a bit like that.

Jennifer Saunders

#9. 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

#10. It is a common observation that any fool can get money; but they are not wise that think so.

Charles Caleb Colton

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

Leszek Kolakowski

#12. Grief is a private, internal thing. No one can say their pain is worse than yours because they don't know. So maybe it's not good to compare. Maybe it's better to talk to people who know you.

Anna Maxted

#13. If a man has to wait before he sleeps with a woman, he'll not only perceive her as more beautiful, he'll also take time to appreciate who she is.

Sherry Argov

#14. I could have been 23 next July
I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.

Hannah Senesh

#15. 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

#16. Your goodness to me has been overwhelming. How tender you are, though I am often as tough as gristle. How patiently you have loved me since you made up your mind to love me always.

Jan Karon

#17. 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

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

Leszek Kolakowski