Best 31 quotes of Bernard Williams on MyQuotes

Bernard Williams

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    Bernard Williams

    A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

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    Bernard Williams

    A half-truth is usually less than half of that.

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    Bernard Williams

    Americans are optimists. They hope they'll be wealthy someday - and they're positive they can get one more brushful of paint out of an empty can.

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    Bernard Williams

    An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity.

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    Bernard Williams

    Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

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    Bernard Williams

    Few things are as democratic as a snowstorm.

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    Bernard Williams

    Ideas are like wandering sons. They show up when you least expect them.

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    Bernard Williams

    If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance.

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    Bernard Williams

    If we try and fail, we have temporary disappointments. But if we do not try at all, we have permanent regrets.

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    Bernard Williams

    I like the word "indolence." It makes my laziness seem classy.

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    Bernard Williams

    It is almost impossible to watch a sunset and not dream.

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    Bernard Williams

    Laziness has many disguises. Soon "winter doldrums" will become "spring fever.

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    Bernard Williams

    Life is supposed to be a series of peaks and valleys. The secret is to keep the valleys from becoming Grand Canyons.

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    Bernard Williams

    No symphony orchestra ever played music like a two-year-old girl laughing with a puppy.

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    Bernard Williams

    People who say, 'Let the chips fall where they may,' usually figure they will not be hit by a chip.

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    Bernard Williams

    September tries its best to have us forget summer.

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    Bernard Williams

    Sooner or later we all quote our mothers.

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    Bernard Williams

    Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

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    Bernard Williams

    The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a Pirate.

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    Bernard Williams

    There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.

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    Bernard Williams

    There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.

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    Bernard Williams

    This is the end of the day, but soon there will be a new day.

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    Bernard Williams

    Unsolicited advice is the junk mail of life.

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    Bernard Williams

    We grow a little every time we do not take advantage of somebody's weakness.

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    Bernard Williams

    We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory.

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    Bernard Williams

    We must escape our illusions of correctness to understand the actions and beliefs of others.

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    Bernard Williams

    What a strange world this would be if we all had the same sense of humor.

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    Bernard Williams

    Women have a favorite room, men a favorite chair.

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    Bernard Williams

    The idea that this end of philosophy— at least, of political philosophy and (I claim) moral philosophy— has close relations with history overlaps with a more ambitious view held by a consistently underestimated Oxford philosopher, R. G. Collingwood. The trouble with Collingwood’s kind of commitment is that it requires one to know some history. My two associates in the view I am sketching are Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor. They are both Roman Catholics, though of different sorts. I used to find this a disquieting fact but no longer do so. All three of us, I could say, accept the significant role of Christianity in understanding modern moral consciousness, and adopt respectively the three possible views about how to move in relation to that: backward in it, forward in it, and out of it. In any case, we all assume some historical commitments, they on a more ambitious scale than I, and perhaps there is a rather nervous competition for who writes the most irresponsible history.

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    Bernard Williams

    ... while transparency is a natural associate of liberalism, it falls short of implying rationalism. It is one aspiration, that social and ethical relations should not essentially rest on ignorance and misunderstanding of what they are, and quite another that all the beliefs and principles involved in them should be explicitly stated. That these are two different things is obvious with personal relations, where to hope that they do not rest on deceit and error is merely decent, but to think that their basis can be made totally explicit is idiocy.

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    Bernard Williams

    Without selfish partiality—to people you are deeply attached to, your family and friends, to place—we are nothing. We are creatures of kinship and loyalty, not blind servants of the world.