Bernard Williams

There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.

— Bernard Williams

The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.

— Bernard Williams

There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.

— Bernard Williams

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.

— Bernard Williams

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

— Bernard Williams

There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.

— Bernard Williams

Women have a favorite room, men a favorite chair.

— Bernard Williams

What a strange world this would be if we all had the same sense of humor.

— Bernard Williams

If the passion for truthfulness is merely controlled and stilled without being satisfied, it will kill the activities it is supposed to support. This may be one of the reasons why, at the present time, the study of the humanities runs a risk of sliding from professional seriousness, through professionalization, to a finally disenchanted careerism.

— Bernard Williams

Deniers do not get their views just from simple mistakes about language and truth. Rather, they believe that there is something to worry about in important areas of our thought and in traditional interpretations of those areas; they sense that it has something to do with truth; and (no doubt driven by the familiar desire to say something at once hugely general, deeply important, and reassuringly simple) they extend their worry to the notion of truth itself.

— Bernard Williams

Positivism ... implies the double falsehood that no interpretation is needed, and that it is not needed because the story which the positivist writer tells, such as it is, is obvious. The story he or she tells is usually a bad one, and its being obvious only means that it is familiar.

— Bernard Williams

As Roland Barthes said, those who do not re-read condemn themselves to reading the same story everywhere: "they recognize what they already think and know."

— Bernard Williams