Top 8 Quotes & Sayings by Susan Stebbing

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British philosopher Susan Stebbing.
Last updated on December 18, 2024.
Susan Stebbing

Lizzie Susan Stebbing was a British philosopher. She belonged to the 1930s generation of analytic philosophy, and was a founder in 1933 of the journal Analysis. Stebbing was the first woman to hold a philosophy chair in the United Kingdom, as well as the first female President of Humanists UK.

To have ideals is not the same as to have impracticable ideals. — © Susan Stebbing
To have ideals is not the same as to have impracticable ideals.
It is not swinish to be happy unless one is happy in swinish ways.
We come to think of an idealist as one who seeks to realize what is not in fact realizable. But, it is necessary to insist, to have ideals is not the same as to have impracticable ideals, however often it may be the case that our ideals are impracticable.
The opposite of thinking clearly is being muddled. To be conscious of being muddled is a horrible experience. To avoid it we may even be tempted to shut our minds and swallow a belief, ready-made, from some expert authority.
A system is said to be coherent if every fact in the system is related every other fact in the system by relations that are not merely conjunctive. A deductive system affords a good example of a coherent system.
We easily fall into the habit of accepting compressed statements which save us from the trouble of thinking. Thus arises what I shall call 'Potted Thinking'.
It is an illusion to suppose that a Dictator makes himself; at most he seizes an opportunity made for him by passive, stupid, incompetent, and above all, unsatisfied and fearful men.
There is an urgent need to-day for the citizens of a democracy to think well. It is not enough to have freedom of the Press and parliamentary institutions. Our difficulties are due partly to our own stupidity, partly to the exploitation of that stupidity, and partly to our own prejudices and personal desires.
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