Philip Kitcher Quotes

When Jews left Judaism, they didn't stop being religious. They simply swapped God-based Judaism for godless secular humanism and leftism. For left-wing Jews, Judaism is their ethnicity; leftism is their religion.

Capitalism is economic Darwinism…free enterprise is code for individualistic amorality…the marketplace is the temple of secular humanism.

The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith which will replace the rotting corpse of Christianity

In face of political differences, contradictions and struggle, the Church preaches peace and co-operation among people holding various political views

I even agree that the concept of god helps some people lead better lives. That does happen. Don't ever forget it. I just think there are better ways to help people lead better lives.

If you find examples of humanism which are anti-religious, or at least in opposition to the religious faith of the place and time, then such humanism is purely destructive, for it has never found anything to replace what it has destroyed.

This is why rational people - anti-religionists - must end their timidity and come out of their closet and assert themselves.

Thank you God for making me an atheist.

The term that best describes me now is 'secular humanist.'

Even secular humanism has great spiritual resources; it is almost like a religion to me.

Incidentally, I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the great science fiction writer and biochemist Dr. Isaac Asimov. John Updike, who is religious, says I talk more about God than any seminarian. Socialism is, in fact, a form of Christianity, people wishing to imitate Christ.

Everything depends on liking the people and trusting the people. You have to assume that whatever they do will be as good as you want the thing to be and just go ahead with that.

Rather than look at a marriage as two people morphing into one thing, you could see two individuals who are choosing to form a partnership.

We might have been a free and great people together.

My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people.

We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own turf in order to create this common ground.

the leading error of the human mind, - the bane of human happiness - the perverter of human virtue ... is Religion - that dark coinage of trembling ignorance! It is Religion - that poisoner of human felicity! It is Religion - that blind guide of human reason! It is Religion - that dethroner of human virtue! which lies at the root of all the evil and all the misery that pervade the world!

People shared everything: information, equipment, their floors, whatever. There was strength in unity.

Without religion the highest endowments of intellect can only render the possessor more dangerous if he be ill disposed; if well disposed, only more unhappy.

"If we had not created a set of people against another the world would have been corrupt", and "against" here means two things: Against in the fact that they are challenging you with their diversity, challenging your intelligence and to challenge is not negative, it can be very positive depending on how you are challenged.

I hate the word assistant. No one works for me. I work with everyone because I couldn't do anything without the people that I work with.

Most innovation comes from people working together, collaborating in teams.

There are people here [in South Africa] who, whatever the debate is on a particular issue, their dominating idea is that at the end of the debate we must emerge stronger than we were before and closer to one another.

If people who have to work together in an enterprise trust one another it is because they are all operating to a common set of ethical norms....such a society will be better able to innovate...since the high degree of trust will permit a wide variety of social relationships to emerge.

No individual has sufficient experience, education, native ability and knowledge to ensure the accumulation of a great fortune, without the cooperation of other people.