Jay L. Garfield famous quotes

We take Aristotle seriously not when we write about his ideas, but when we take his ideas as part of our discussions.
-- Jay L. Garfield

#Writing #Ideas #Discussion

Buddhist epistemologists do argue that rational analysis leads to the conclusion that rational analysis cannot give us infallible access to truth, including that one. That's not self-defeating, though; it only induces an important kind of epistemic humility and a clearer view of what we do when we reason. We engage in one more fallible human activity among many.
-- Jay L. Garfield

#Buddhist #Humility #Self

To take philosophy seriously is to engage with it philosophically.
-- Jay L. Garfield

#Philosophy

When we translate, we always to some extent betray the text we are translating. That is why translation is so hard and thankless. All you can do is to fail in the least egregious way possible.
-- Jay L. Garfield

#Way #Failing #Betray

The goal of education should be to dismantle the Middle Pole view, not to reinforce it in the name of the need for a grounding in one's own civilisation.
-- Jay L. Garfield

#Views #Names #Goal

When I went to college I knew what I wanted to study, and what career I wanted to pursue. I wanted to study psychology in order to become a clinical psychologist.
-- Jay L. Garfield

#College #Order #Careers

Western philosophers gained access to Asian and African traditions initially by noting similarities and differences. But that, as A.C. Mukerji, of Allahabad, was to note in 1932, is not to do philosophy, but is at best a preparation.
-- Jay L. Garfield

#Philosophy #Differences #Preparation

I think that parochialism is built into many kinds of nationalism and educational institutions in which children are brought up to treat their own culture as the unmarked case, and to mark the products of other culture.
-- Jay L. Garfield

#Children #Educational #Thinking

In the USA, we learn "art history" as Western art history, and the history of Asian, or African art is a special case; we learn politics by examining our own government system, and consider other systems special cases, and the same is true of philosophy.
-- Jay L. Garfield

#Art #Philosophy #Government

Back in the days when American billboard advertising was in flower [said Hemingway], there were two slogans that I always rated above all others: the old Cremo Cigar ad that proclaimed, Spit Is a Horrid Word-but Worse on the end of Your Cigar, and Drink Schlitz in Brown Bottles and Avoid that Skunk Taste. You don't get creative writing like that any more.

I’m not a fan of ‘write what you know.’ If you don’t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing ‘The Year of Living Biblically.’ That was kind of the point – to learn.

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down.

Ideas may drift into other minds, but they do not drift my way. I have to go and fetch them. I know no work manual or mental to equal the appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere.

The Tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense that they contain secret doctrine, which is the realization by the few of truths embedded in the consciousness of all.

The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.

The man with but one idea in his head is sure to exaggerate that to top-heaviness, and thus he loses his equilibrium.

There was some discussion, but nothing got close to being a reality. They asked for a lot and got a lot (from the White Sox).

Political correctness kills discussion.

Game calls cant be just, Oh, by the way, as part of a larger discussion.