Quotes by David Smail

Suffering is a form of knowledge. It tells us what is wrong with our world.

The social havoc wreaked by unfettered economic greed comes to be interiorised as the personal weakness and irresponsibility of those principally affected.

There is, I suggest, a strong positive correlation between a) the height of the rung occupied on the ladder of power, b) the strength of a sense of personal virtue, and c) the firmness of the conviction that those lower down could and certainly should act more responsibly.

People can and often do ignore or deny their common humanity with others, or deny, at least implicitly, that their common humanity commits them to sympathy or compassion for those less advantaged than themselves. Indeed, such an attitude towards ones fellows can be represented as tough, uncompromising, positively heroic: the supermen versus the wimps. But just as this ruthless world may be chosen - as it is chosen by the current rulers of the globalised neo-liberal market - so if may also be rejected.

Science is about our passionate conviction that we are placed within a universe that is not simply the result of our imaginings, and our longing and determination to understand it. Ultimately, science is about reality, truth and freedom.

It is incumbent upon us to do what we can, even if we cannot do much.

The principle locations of exploitation have moved, through the mechanism of globalisation, to where most of us cant see them and dont really care about them if we do.

“Science is thus not the creation of some kind of mysterious contact with or insight into ultimate reality, but the upshot of our own very human, and even culturally local, interests, concerns, and values. I suspect, also, that we are ready to give particular weight and credence to the evidence of our senses because it is not in our interests to deceive ourselves about its nature (although it is certainly possible to do so).”

“Even for physical science, the ultimate test of whether or not something is true lies in the individuals experience, not in some objectified, dogmatic set of rules. The sensory experiences which are predictable from natural scientific laws permit agreement between individuals because those individuals share very similar physical structures, are persuaded by the same kinds of logical reasoning, and operate with a similar set of values.”

“However much some of them might like to be and however much they are seen as such by many people, scientists and psychologists are not creators of our culture, discoverers of ultimate truths which then shape our view of the world, but rather interpreters and refiners of our most fundamental concepts and understandings (and myths).”

“Tinkering, however scientifically, with our minds and bodies will never make the world a better place.”