Philosophy is the childhood of the intellect, and a culture that tries to skip it will never grow up. - Thomas Nagel

I do not believe that the source of value is unitary — displaying apparent multiplicity only in its application to the world. I believe that value has fundamentally different kinds of sources, and that they are reflected in the classification of values into types. Not all values represent the pursuit of some single good in a variety of settings.

[With regard to] the rather common general distinction between good and bad sex …, bad sex is generally better than none at all. This should not be controversial: it seems to hold for other important matters, like food, music, literature, and society. In the end, one must choose from among the available alternatives, whether their availability depends on the environment or on one's own constitution. And the alternatives have to be fairly grim before it becomes rational to opt for nothing.

Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions.