The philosopher is someone who doesn't know, but who wants to find out.

- Simon Critchley

If the denial of death is self-hatred, as it is to deny our freedom and live in fear of death (which is to say, to live in a form of bondage), then t…

- Simon Critchley

Genuinely great humour recognises the world it's describing and yet we are also called into question by it. That's what great art should do. That's w…

- Simon Critchley

It's complicated. On the one hand we're killer apes, and on the other hand we have this metaphysical longing.

- Simon Critchley

I've always been very keen on Pascal, and what I'm most keen on in Pascal is his emphasis upon human wretchedness. He has a phrase which goes somethi…

- Simon Critchley

That is to say, politics is essentially about the management of fear, an economy of fear, continually adjusting the level of fear to produce the righ…

- Simon Critchley

Humour is human. Why? Well, because the Philosopher, Aristotle, says so.

- Simon Critchley

Just to say "Well, God is dead" in one breath is to say, in another, that nothing means anything. This is the moment of nihilism. Nihilism is the aff…

- Simon Critchley

For me philosophy begins with these experiences of disappointment: a disappointment at the level of what I would think of as "meaning," namely that, …

- Simon Critchley