Allen W. Wood Quotes

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• Popular religion since the time of Kant and Fichte has gone in a direction they tried to prevent and that has been disastrous for the humanity both of believers and of the rest of us. Look at the role of religion in Republican presidential primaries if you need any confirmation of this last statement.

  Allen W. Wood

  Presidential, Humanity, Lasts

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• Descartes recommended that we distrust the senses and rely on the ... use of our intellect.

  Allen W. Wood

  Use, Distrust, Intellect

  4 Copy quote

• Capitalism now seems more likely a swamp, a bog, a quicksand in which humanity is presently flailing about, unable to extricate itself, perhaps doomed to perish within a few generations from the long term effects of the technology which seemed to Marx its greatest gift to humanity.

  Allen W. Wood

  Technology, Long, Humanity

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• It has taken me a long time to realize where I most disagree with Marx. His assessment of capitalism is far too favorable. He took its instability, inhumanity and irrationality to be signs that it was a merely transitional form, which had delivered into humanity's hands the means to a much better way of life than any that have ever existed on earth. Marx could not bring himself to believe that our species is so benighted, irrational and slavish that it would put up with such a monstrous way of life.

  Allen W. Wood

  Believe, Taken, Mean

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

• Adam Smith saw the greed of modern capitalism for what it was - a form of destructive ambition that may have favorable effects on the productive capacities of society, but which is of no direct benefit to anyone - not even to the greedy themselves, whose illusory chase after a will-o-the-wisp leaves them morally bankrupt and unhappy.

  Allen W. Wood

  Ambition, Greed, Unhappy

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Our procedures of deliberation are not ways of finding out independent moral truths but instead ways of "constructing" these truths, in the process of deciding what to do.

  Allen W. Wood

  Independent, Deciding What To Do, Way

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• People are often most proud of precisely those things of which they should most be ashamed.

  Allen W. Wood

  People, Proud, Should

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Capitalism has proven to be a far more terrible system than Marx could ever bring himself to imagine. Those who are so deluded as to find something good in it, or even feel loyalty toward it, are its most pitiful victims.

  Allen W. Wood

  Loyalty, Imagine, Victim

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• In general, those who defend capitalism are basically out of touch with reality.

  Allen W. Wood

  Reality, Capitalism

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• It is sad to witness the persistence in our society of the racism and xenophobia that seems to be a permanent part of our political culture. It is shameful to see politicians exploiting these human weaknesses in order to gain political power. It is most depressing of all to contemplate a future in which politicians who do this will continue to have influence over people's lives.

  Allen W. Wood

  Depressing, Xenophobia, Persistence

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  20 Copy quote

• We usually can't know how, and we probably should not even ask, how our lives contribute to a better world.

  Allen W. Wood

  World, Should, Know How

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Consequentialist theories begin with a very simple and undoubtedly valid point: Every action aims at a future end, and is seen as a means to it.

  Allen W. Wood

  Mean, Simple, Action

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• The picture of Kant as the 'theological Robespierre' or the "world-crusher" was first suggested by someone with whom Kant stood in a relation of philosophical disagreement but also great mutual respect: namely, Moses Mendelssohn.

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophical, World, Firsts

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  5 Copy quote

• Marx's writings still have something to teach us about capitalism. They have little or nothing to teach us about any alternatives to it. Anyone who had read them knows that.

  Allen W. Wood

  Writing, Alternatives, Littles

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Since we cannot know too much about the long term effects of our particular lives, and since success and fame are not good measures of the value of what we have done, it should be enough for any of us that as far as we can tell, in some small way we have made humanity's future better rather than worse.

  Allen W. Wood

  Long, Humanity, Done

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• It is both theoretically mistaken and morally wrong to regard others as objects of investigation rather than partners in free rational communication.

  Allen W. Wood

  Communication, Partners, Investigation

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Kant considers belief in God and immortality to be items of "faith" because he relates faith to the pursuit of ends - in this case, the highest good.

  Allen W. Wood

  Belief, Immortality, Pursuit

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Kant's treatments of rational theology and metaphysics were aimed primarily at theoretical questions. His attitude toward the pseudo-sciences of "special metaphysics" in Wolff and Baumgarten was always double-edged. He did see them as pseudo-sciences but also valued their doctrinal value and especially their regulative value for the empirical sciences. Like his views about religion, I don't think any of this is any longer viable in its original form.

  Allen W. Wood

  Attitude, Thinking, Views

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• When consequentialist theories are developed in terms of an equally shallow psychology of the good - such as a crude form of hedonism - the results can sometimes strike sensible people as revolting and inhuman. People can be reduced to simple repositories of positive or negative sensory states, and their humanity is lost sight of entirely.

  Allen W. Wood

  Simple, Sight, People

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  19 Copy quote

• It is a cause of shame to any member of the human race to be a member of the same species some of whose members could vote for any candidate for president that has been offered by the Republican party. Such people seem to be motivated only by short-sighted greed, ignorance, fear and hatred.

  Allen W. Wood

  Party, Ignorance, Race

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Those who see Smith as a defender of capitalism - as it existed in Marx's day, or as it exists today - show above all that they are not living in the real world. They are behaving as though the undeveloped form of capitalism Smith studied is still with us.

  Allen W. Wood

  Real, World, Today

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• If the problem of free will is to see how freedom fits into the order of nature, then Kant's basic view about the free will problem is that it is insoluble.

  Allen W. Wood

  Views, Order, Problem

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Since the Enlightenment, popular religion has rejected the Enlightenment path and transformed itself into a bastion of resistance against reason.

  Allen W. Wood

  Enlightenment, Path, Resistance

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• People who enjoy the privileges of success must use these privileges to benefit those who do not have them. These privileges constitute a deep hole they need to climb out of if they are to prevent its being the case that the world would have been better off if they had never been born.

  Allen W. Wood

  People, Needs, Use

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• What are we to think of the shortsightedness of the great mass of people who are content to do nothing about it, and even worse, the greed or venality of the rich and powerful who deliberately bar the way to human survival?

  Allen W. Wood

  Powerful, Thinking, People

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

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