Morris Raphael Cohen Quotes

There is such a polarized discussion of economics among people like analysts, columnists, bloggers; often, they end up just saying that views other than their own should not even be discussed. I find that frustrating. There is no intellectual progress without considering lots and lots of different views.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

What if you are a conservative in a liberal environment? Then what you are conserving is liberalism.

Parties from principle, especially abstract, speculative principle, are known only to modern times, and are, perhaps, the most extraordinary and unaccountable phenomenon, that has yet appeared in human affairs.

The trouble with our intelligence is that we have a bunch of social scientists doing the analysis when the world is dominated by fanatics.

One of the things my family taught me - I think very important in religion and science - is that you must be ready to stand up for what you think. Decide what you really think is best, and stick with it.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.

You have your ideology and I have mine.

Empathy has some unfortunate features - it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We're often at our best when we're smart enough not to rely on it.

In any match, there are few critical moments where there's no second best decision. The rest of the moves are intuitive.

Well it's really hard to satisfy the right wing. I can tell you that.

I grew up in a very political household. My mum used to shout at the television. At Mrs. Thatcher.

The basic fault lines today are not between people with different beliefs but between people who hold these beliefs with an element of uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs with a pretense of certitude.

We did not seek ideological confrontation.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

I think that there's a liberal element out there that finds me not acceptable. They don't like my stance on a lot of issues because I am conservative.

Living with the liberals, you get to hear their arguments, fight with them all the time. Keeps me alert.

The problem for the Left, however, is that the moment it stops painting the Right as vile, it has to argue the issues.

I encourage active skepticism - when people are being skeptical because they're trying to identify the best course of action. They're trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.

I think that liberals need to grow up.

Perhaps Obama is often slow to nail controversies because he needs time to live inside them for a while in his head. It's unnerving for the rest of us, but even the haters, one feels, are made to think more deeply than they'd like before they return to the bickering and the games.

There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm. Peaceful coexistence corrupts.

At a very young age I was predicting outcomes, trying to take all the information and find the best route to wherever I was going. I avoided a lot of pitfalls because of that.

A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth.