Thomas Nagel quotes

Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher known for his influential work in moral and political philosophy, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. Author of the famous essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?", his writings have generated widespread debate about consciousness and subjective experience. He has contributed significantly to contemporary philosophical thought and remains a respected figure in the field. Here are 13 of his quotes:

Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions.

Thomas Nagel

The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected.

Thomas Nagel

If sub specie aeternitatis [from eternity's point of view] there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.

Thomas Nagel

We assume that our own advances in objectivity are steps along a path that extends beyond them and beyond all our capacities. But even allowing unlimited time, or an unlimited number of generations, to take as many successive steps as we like, the process can never be completed. ... What is wanted is some way of making the most objective standpoint the basis of action.

Thomas Nagel

Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.

Thomas Nagel

There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality.

Thomas Nagel

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.

Thomas Nagel

Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics.

Thomas Nagel

Ethics increases the range of what it is about ourselves that we can will-extending it from our actions to the motives and character traits and dispositions from which they arise. We want to be able to will the sources of our actions down to the very bottom.

Thomas Nagel

I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.

Thomas Nagel

I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

Thomas Nagel