“Darwin proposed that creatures like us who, by their nature, are riven by strong emotional conflicts, and who have also the intelligence to be aware of those conflicts, absolutely need to develop a morality because they need a priority system… — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
“Unless all that we take to be knowledge is an illusion, we must hold that in thinking we are not reading rationality into an… — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
“By contrast, if one conceives the idea of human rights as centring on the notion that each individual is completely autonomous and should have… — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
The world in which the kestrel moves, the world that it sees, is, and always will be, entirely beyond us. That there are such… — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
Few scientists would treat their cars as badly as they treat their conceptual schemes. — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
“. . . Neither ecological nor social engineering will lead us to a conflict-free, simple path . . . Utilitarians and others who simply advise us to be happy are unhelpful, because we almost always have to make a choice either between different kinds of happiness--different things to be happy _about_--or between these and other things we want, which nothing… — Mary Midgley Copy Share
When some portion of the biosphere is rather unpopular with the human race-a crocodile, a dandelion, a stony valley, a snowstorm, an odd-shaped flint-there… — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
It is extremely urgent to try and adapt our thoughts realistically to a world which has no fixed general direction either upward or downward,… — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
It is this claim to a monopoly of meaning, rather than any special scientific doctrine, that makes science and religion look like competitors today.… — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
Morally as well as physically, there is only one world, and we all have to live in it — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
What great philosophers do for us is not to hand out such an all-purpose system. It is to light up and clarify some special… — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
Evolution is the creation-myth of our age. By telling us our origin it shapes our views of what we are. It influences not just… — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral. To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life. To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating… — Mary Midgley Copy Share Image
