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“I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each.”
― Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

“The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign.

The Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her.”
― Heraclitus

“Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor

“The word on the street was that I had two options when it came to caring for my future baby: I could either eat, sleep, drink, bathe, walk, and work with my baby permanently affixed to my body until the two of us meld into one, or I could leave my baby out naked on a cold millstone to cry, refusing to hold or feed her until the schedule allowed. Apparently, there was no in between.”
― Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood

“In the history of philosophy, the term “rationalism�� has two distinct meanings. In one sense, it signifies an unbreached commitment to reasoned thought in contrast to any irrationalist rejection of the mind. In this sense, Aristotle and Ayn Rand are preeminent rationalists, opposed to any form of unreason, including faith. In a narrower sense, however, rationalism contrasts with empiricism as regards the false dichotomy between commitment to so-called “pure�� reason (i.e., reason detached from perceptual reality) and an exclusive reliance on sense experience (i.e., observation without inference therefrom). Rationalism, in this sense, is a commitment to reason construed as logical deduction from non-observational starting points, and a distrust of sense experience (e.g., the method of Descartes). Empiricism, according to this mistaken dichotomy, is a belief that sense experience provides factual knowledge, but any inference beyond observation is a mere manipulation of words or verbal symbols (e.g., the approach of Hume). Both Aristotle and Ayn Rand reject such a false dichotomy between reason and sense experience; neither are rationalists in this narrow sense.

Theology is the purest expression of rationalism in the sense of proceeding by logical deduction from premises ungrounded in observable fact—deduction without reference to reality. The so-called “thinking�� involved here is purely formal, observationally baseless, devoid of facts, cut off from reality. Thomas Aquinas, for example, was history’s foremost expert regarding the field of “angelology.�� No one could match his “knowledge�� of angels, and he devoted far more of his massive Summa Theologica to them than to physics.”
― Andrew Bernstein

“I don't hate on "both sides" to feel superior. I could feel superior on either side. I hate "both sides" to show them that there are more than two sides.”
― T.J. Kirk

“(About parenthood and BDSM)
Note that a difficulty in shifting gears, or a struggle to find the time, is not the same thing as an ontological either/or.”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

“DEONTOLOGY AND CONCEQUENTIALISM, A NOVEL APPROACH: Consequentialism and Deontology (Deontological Ethics) are two contrasting categories of Normative Ethics, the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental principles that determine the morality of human actions (or non-actions). Their supposed difference is that while Consequentialism determines if an action is morally right or wrong by examining its consequences, Deontology focuses on the action itself, regardless of its consequences.
To the hypothetical question “Should I do this man a little injustice, if by this I could save the whole humanity from torture and demise?��, the philosopher Immanuel Kant, a pure deontologist (absolutist) answers: “Fiat justitia, pereat mundus�� (Do justice even if the whole world would perish).
Superficially, it seems that a decent deontologist don’t care about consequences whatsoever. His/her one and only duty is to invariably obey to pre-existing, universal moral rules without exceptions: “do not kill��, “do not lie��, “do not use another human as a means to an end��, and so on.
At this point I would like to present my thesis on this subject. The central idea here is that deontological ethics only appears to be indifferent to the consequences of an action. In fact, it is only these very consequences that determine what our moral rules and ethical duties should be. For example, the moral law “do not kill��, has its origin to the dire consequences that the killing of another human being brings about; for the victim (death), the perpetrator (often imprisonment or death) and for the whole humanity (collapse of society and civilization).
Let us discuss the well-worn thought experiment of the mad axeman asking a mother where their young children are, so he can kill them. We suppose that the mother knows with 100% certainty that she can mislead him by lying and she can save her children from certain death (once again: supposing that she surely knows that she can save her children ONLY by lying, not by telling the truth or by avoiding to answer). In this thought experiment the hard deontologist would insist that it is immoral to lie, even if that would lead to horrible consequences. But, I assert that this deontological inflexibility is not only inhuman and unethical, it is also outrightly hypocritical. Because if the mother knows that their children are going to be killed if she tells the truth (or does not answer) and they are going to be saved if she tells a harmless lie, then by telling the truth she disobeys the moral law “do not kill/do not cause the death of an innocent��, which is much worse than the moral rule “do not lie��. The fact that she does not kill her children with her own hands is completely irrelevant. She could have saved them without harming another human, yet she chose not to. So the absolutist deontologist chooses actively to disobey a much more important moral law, only because she is not the immediate cause, but a cause via a medium (the crazy axeman in this particular thought experiment).
So here are the two important conclusions: Firstly, Deontology in normative ethics is in reality a “masked consequentialism��, because the origin of a moral law is to be found in its consequences e.g. stealing is generally morally wrong, because by stealing, someone is deprived of his property that may be crucial for his survival or prosperity. Thus, the Deontology–Consequentialism dichotomy is a false one.
And secondly, the fact that we are not the immediate “vessel�� by which a moral rule is broken, but we nevertheless create or sustain a “chain of events�� that will almost certainly lead to the breaking of a moral law, does surely not absolve us and does not give us the right to choose the worst outcome. Mister Immanuel Kant would avoid doing an innocent man an injustice, yet he would choose to lead billions of innocent people to agonizing death.”
― Giannis Delimitsos, NOVEL PHILOSOPHY: New ideas about Ethics, Epistemology, Science and the sweet Life

“Oh, there's a them now.”
― Nick Wilde

“I think a lot of this kind of work goes on at other (to say lower, deeper, or higher introduces a false gradation) levels, when one is saying how-do-you-do, or even 'sleeping'.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Story of Kullervo

“Popular books often draw a dichotomy between intuition and analysis—“blink�� versus “think”—and pick one or the other as the way to go. I am more of a thinker than a blinker, but blink-think is another false dichotomy. The choice isn’t either/or, it is how to blend them in evolving situations.”
― Philip E. Tetlock, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction