Harry A. Blackmun Quotes

A woman should be able to choose to have an abortion up to a certain point in pregnancy.

Throughout its history Islam has been marked by two trends: an intellectual trend that speculated on the philosophical foundations of the world and humanity, and another trend that turned political challenge violent by resort to force.

The living would come up with endless theories to argue, because the living were exceptionally good at arguing, especially when no one knew the answer.

Philosophers have often held dispute As to the seat of thought in man and brute For that the power of thought attends the latter My friend, thy beau, hath made a settled matter, And spite of dogmas current in all ages, One settled fact is better than ten sages. (O,Tempora! O,Mores!)

I should like to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche somewhere in a train or a steamer, and to spend the whole night talking to him. I consider his philosophy won't last long, however. It's more showy than convincing.

You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.

I think the craziest thing I heard, and this guy's not even nominated, he's from Texas...he said there's no reason that women shouldn't carry a stillborn baby to term, and that it's an excuse to have an abortion if she doesn't want to. She should just let nature take its course from start to finish. Literally forcing birth of a fetus that died in the womb.

I am an advocate of one form of the New Perspective. But there are as many new perspectives as there are people writing about it.

One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows.... Knowledge is the thing you know and how can you know more than you do know.

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus."

Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed today.

But in philosophy, sometimes the baby ought to go out with the bath water.

I think they find it - they find me quite confusing, because - they know the music, but they don't know anything about me because I keep a very private lifestyle so they end up making up stories as such. But I don't really concern myself too much about them.

It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied.

Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.

Is Knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know?

Ultimately there can be no disagreement between history, science, philosophy, and theology. Where there is disagreement, there is either ignorance or error.

A young pregnant wife has been hospitalized for a simple attack of appendicitis. The doctors had to apply ice to her stomach and when the treatments ended the doctors suggested that she abort the child, they told her it was the 'best solution' because the baby would be born with some disability but the young brave wife decided not to abort, and the child was born. That woman was my Mother and I was the child.

I used to be pro-choice."..."I was once pro-choice and the thing that changed my mind was, I read my husband's biology books, medical books, and what I learned . . . At the moment of conception, a life starts. And this life has its own unique set of DNA, which contains a blueprint for the whole genetic makeup. The sex is determined. We know there's a life because it's growing and changing.

I believe that any doctor that performs an abortion, I would advocate that any doctor that performs an abortion, should be criminally charged for doing so.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Ultimate questions will always lie beyond the scope of empirical science as it is.

I consider that in dialectics I am the equal of Socrates. As to women, I agree that each has three or four souls, but none of them a reasoning one.

There are moments in life where the question of knowing whether one might think otherwise than one thinks and perceive otherwise than one sees is indispensable if one is to continue to observe or reflect... What is philosophy today... if it does not consist in, instead of legitimizing what we already know, undertaking to know how and how far it might be possible to think otherwise?

How do you get from, "We do not know whether this is protectable human life," to "Therefore, we will not protect it?" Wouldn't the logic just as likely (some would say far more likely) be, "Since we do not know whether this is protectable human life, therefore we will protect it?" Why does the judicial uncertainty about the humanity of the unborn lead to unbridled license to destroy it?