There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.
Bernard WilliamsRead
An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the distinction between true needs and perceived luxuries, suggesting that what we desire may feel essential to our wellbeing.
Bernard Williams' quote presents a thought-provoking perspective on how human desires can sometimes masquerade as necessities. It suggests that extravagances, which are often seen as superfluous luxuries, may be considered essential by our spirit or inner self. This illustrates the complex relationship between our wants and needs, and how our perception can reshape what we deem necessary for happiness and fulfillment.
Themes
ExtravaganceNecessitySpiritDesiresLuxury
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about personal finance, one might say this quote to emphasize the importance of distinguishing wants from needs.
More from Bernard Williams
All quotes βContemporary moral philosophy has found an original way of being boring, which is by not discussing moral issues at all.
Bernard WilliamsRead
The majority of philosophers are totally humorless. That's part of their trouble.
Bernard WilliamsRead
People have been predicting the death of philosophy since the 17th century. When I was a student, people were saying, 'We're in the last days of philosophy.' Then we were told in the '60s it would be replaced by sociology, then by literary criticism.
Bernard WilliamsRead
Virtually the only subject in which one could ever get a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge was classics. So I went to Oxford to study classics and, unlike Cambridge, it had a philosophy component, and I became completely transported by it.
Bernard WilliamsRead
If we try and fail, we have temporary disappointments. But if we do not try at all, we have permanent regrets.
Bernard WilliamsRead
Similar quotes
War is very uncertain in its results, and often when affairs look most desperate they suddenly assume a more hopeful state.
George MeadeRead
A precedent embalms a principle.
Benjamin DisraeliRead
How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
Christopher HitchensRead
To be baptized means to make the passage with the people of Israel and with Jesus from slavery to freedom and from death to new life. It is a commitment to a life in and through Jesus.
Henri NouwenRead
The synergetic integral of the totality of all principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in pure principle is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us, because as humans--in pure principle--we do not and never will know all the principles
R. Buckminster FullerRead
There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.
Gore VidalRead