Philosophy Quote by Philip Pullman — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“It might have been a new way for her heart to beat.”

“You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us.”

“When you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, ‘It’s all in Plato’ — meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better. I want to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife.”

“The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake.”

“The things that pose the greatest threats to your survival are the most real things.”

“We can't avoid reasoning; we can only avoid doing it well.”

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”

“There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

“Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons.”

“Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine, and the exercise of philosophy. But it also comes through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless.”