Derek Parfit

Normativity, I believe, is very different from motivating force. Neither includes, or implies, the other. Other animals can be motivated by their…

— Derek Parfit

We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination.

— Derek Parfit

“What am I more than elaborate sentience?”

— Derek Parfit

“We ought not to do to our future selves what it would be wrong to do to other people.”

— Derek Parfit

It is not enough to ask, 'Will my act harm other people?' Even if the answer is No, my act may still…

— Derek Parfit

“What now matters most is how we respond to various risks to the survival of humanity. We are creating some of these…

— Derek Parfit

“Disbelief in God, openly admitted by a majority, is a recent event, not yet completed. Because this event is so recent, Non-Religious…

— Derek Parfit

“My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there…

— Derek Parfit

Criticizing himself again, Sidgwick writes: I am not an original man: and I think less of my own thoughts every day.

— Derek Parfit

While reasons are provided by the facts,...rationality...depends instead on our beliefs. [...] [I]f I believe falsely that my hotel is on fire,…

— Derek Parfit

No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing

— Derek Parfit