Pascal Boyer famous quotes

[R]eligious concepts are parasitic upon moral intuitions.
-- Pascal Boyer

#Intuition #Nihilism #Moral

The fundamentalist violence is, so is it, an attempt to increase the stakes, i.e. to discourage the potential desertions by showing that defection will cost them dear, that those who adopt other values will be persecuted or even killed.
-- Pascal Boyer

#Violence #Cost #Stakes

A slew of cognitive traits predisposes us to faith,
-- Pascal Boyer

#Traits

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

The most intractable of our experiences is the experience of Time-the intuition of duration, combined with the thought of perpetual perishing.

All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know.

Meaning is malleable: take it out, you get nihilism and despair. Put it in, you get sacredness and something most special.

What can be broken, should be broken.

Like other lifeforms, we [humans] exist only to replicate ourselves.

While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.

The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.

In some ways, what I learned is that you can take a character and breathe with them, and its up to the audience to interpret rather than you putting moral stamp on the character.

We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.