Top Rebecca Goldstein Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Rebecca Goldstein Biography

Rebecca Goldstein

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (born February 23, 1950) is an American philosopher who is also a novelist and public intellectual. She is the author of ten books, many of which cross the divide between fiction and non-fiction. Her Princeton Ph.D. was in philosophy of science, and she is sometimes grouped with novelists, such as Richard Powers and Alan Lightman, who create fiction that is knowledgeable of, and sympathetic toward, science.

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Rebecca Goldstein Quotes

Plato conceived of philosophy as necessarily gregarious rather than solitary. The exposure of presumptions is best done in company, the more argumentative the better.

Done, Exposure, Philosophy, Plato

Almost everybody thinks about philosophy, even if they don't realize it's philosophy and even if they have no sense of the difficulty of the problems, the array of possible answers.

Answers, Array, Philosophy, Problems, Thinking, Thinks

I think the humanities always have to take science, our great knowledge that we get from science, into account, but then try to answer the human questions and try to make sense out of our lives, taking into account all of the scientific knowledge.

Humanity, Science, Sense, Think, Thinking, Trying

Children, who have so much to learn in so short a time, had involved the tendency to trust adults to instruct them in the collective knowledge of our species, and this trust confers survival value. But it also makes children vulnerable to being tricked and adults who exploit this vulnerability should be deeply ashamed.

Adults, Children, Collective, Survival, Time, Vulnerability

Plato worried that philosophical writing would take the place of living conversations for which, in philosophy, there is no substitute.

Living, Philosophical, Philosophy, Plato

When you ask why did some particular question occur to a scientist or philosopher for the first time, or why did this particular approach seem natural, then your questions concern the context of discovery. When you ask whether the argument the philosopher puts forth to answer that question is sound, or whether the evidence justifies the scientific theory proposed, then you've entered the context of justification. Considerations of history, sociology, anthropology, and psychology are relevant to the context of discovery, but not to justification.

Discovery, Psychology, Firsts, Natural, Approach, Justification

Everyone loves a hero. What we differ on is the question of who the heroes are, because we differ over what matters. And who matters is a function of what matters. [If] what matters is intelligence, the people who matter are the intelligent, and the people who matter the most, the heroes, are the geniuses.

Differ, Hero, Intelligent, Loves, Matters, What Matters

I've got access to your mysterious body but not your mysterious soul. Souls seem to me the loneliest possibility of all.

Access, Body, Loneliest, Mysterious, Possibility, Soul

I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household and I wouldn't say so much it's informed my views, but it's informed my interest, so I think as a child I was often very baffled by knowledge claims.

Baffled, Children, Raised, Say, Thinking, Views

The philosophers talk across the centuries exclusively to one another, hermetically sealed from any influences derived from non-philosophical discourse.

Across, Hermetically, Influence, Philosopher, Philosophical, Sealed

In fact, it’s the very impersonality of impersonal knowledge that renders such knowledge the most ethically potent of all.

Fact, Facts, Impersonality, Knowledge, Potent, Renders

It is an essential feature of the just state that the wealthy be kept away from political power and that the politically powerful be kept away from wealth.

Essentials, Feature, Political, Powerful, State, Wealth

One doesn't diminish a philosopher's achievement, and doesn't undermine its soundness, by showing how the particular set of questions on which he focused, the orientation he brought to bear on his focus, has some causal connection to the circumstances of his life.

Achievement, Connections, Focus, Particular, Set, Undermine

So dogma, doctrine, unexamined assumptions, that's what it is to be sharing that, the hippies shadow, no way of grounding it to reality. It's where we're just cut off from reality unless we can argue, we can substantiate, we can justify, we can convince each other.

Argue, Cutting, Hippie, Hippies, Reality, Sharing

Everybody is struggling to refine their views in opposition to the other people. And that's one of the most important things that philosophy actually has to teach us that you have to air your views and bring them to the table with people - with whom you disagree very much.

Philosophy, Struggle, Air, Bring, People

If there is such a thing as philosophical progress, then why - unlike scientific progress - is it so invisible? Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was torturously secured by complex argument comes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance.

Intuition, Invisible, Philosophical, Scientific, Thing, Views

The sum and substance of education is the right training that effectually leads the soul of the child at play on to the love of the calling in its adult life.

Children, Play, Right, Soul, Substance, Sum

Plato's concern is not just an intellectual issue, but it is knitted with emotional life as well.

Concern, Emotional, Intellectual, Issue, Issues, Plato

When we call a philosopher distinguished, we are not saying that she is worthy and not saying that she is recognized, but we are saying that she occupies the intersection of both - that she is recognized and worthy; even that she is recognized because she's worthy.

Distinguished, Occupies, Philosopher, Recognized, Worthy

I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter "Nike" and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.

Daughter, Nike, Sneakers, Friend, Chose

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