“Anything that we can destroy but are unable to make is, in a sense sacred, and all our 'explanations' of it do not really explain anything.”

“If we can understand each other, then is anything really beyond our reach?”

“If you are dead you are totally unable to do anything to change your condition. We are spiritually helpless and hopeless and if our condition is to change, God must do it because we cannot.”

“If nothing is sacred, then we are all left to crawl through the mud, and there is no meaning to anything.”

“Our craving for generality has [as one] source … our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is “purely descriptive.”

“Feel completely unable to do anything. Try to picture your life in five years. It really seems like you will be dead.”