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Top 25 Susan Neiman Quotes (2025 Update)

Susan Neiman Quote: “Whatever else you may need to get clarity, you must start with open eyes.”

1. “Whatever else you may need to get clarity, you must start with open eyes.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Philosophy’s greatest task is to enlarge our sense of possibility.”

2. “Philosophy’s greatest task is to enlarge our sense of possibility.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Tribalism will always make your world smaller; universalism is the only way to expand it.”

3. “Tribalism will always make your world smaller; universalism is the only way to expand it.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Growing up means realizing that no time of one’s life is the best one, and resolving to savor every second of joy within reach. You know each will pass, and you no longer experience that as betrayal.”

4. “Growing up means realizing that no time of one’s life is the best one, and resolving to savor every second of joy within reach. You know each will pass, and you no longer experience that as betrayal.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Human attempts to construct moral order are always precarious: If righteousness too often leads to self-righteousness, the demand for justice can lead to one guillotine or another.”

5. “Human attempts to construct moral order are always precarious: If righteousness too often leads to self-righteousness, the demand for justice can lead to one guillotine or another.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Freedom cannot simply mean doing whatever strikes you at the moment: that way you’re a slave to any whim or passing fancy. Real freedom involves control over your life as a whole, learning to make plans and promises and decisions, to take responsibility for your actions’ consequences.”

6. “Freedom cannot simply mean doing whatever strikes you at the moment: that way you’re a slave to any whim or passing fancy. Real freedom involves control over your life as a whole, learning to make plans and promises and decisions, to take responsibility for your actions’ consequences.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “As long as your ideas of what’s possible are limited by what’s actual, no other idea has a chance.”

7. “As long as your ideas of what’s possible are limited by what’s actual, no other idea has a chance.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “You may substitute knowledge for superstition without satisfying the needs that drive people into superstition’s arms.”

8. “You may substitute knowledge for superstition without satisfying the needs that drive people into superstition’s arms.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Rousseau introduced the idea of false needs, and showed how the systems we live in work against our growing up: they dazzle us with toys and bewilder us with so many trivial products that we are too busy making silly choices to remember that the adult ones are made by others.”

9. “Rousseau introduced the idea of false needs, and showed how the systems we live in work against our growing up: they dazzle us with toys and bewilder us with so many trivial products that we are too busy making silly choices to remember that the adult ones are made by others.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Unlike kitsch, moral clarity is hard to come by. It means working to make sense of things you do not even want to acknowledge. It often means not knowing if you ever get it right.”

10. “Unlike kitsch, moral clarity is hard to come by. It means working to make sense of things you do not even want to acknowledge. It often means not knowing if you ever get it right.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “One great function of the arts is to keep ideals alive in a culture that does not yet realize them.”

11. “One great function of the arts is to keep ideals alive in a culture that does not yet realize them.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “When education is overwhelmed by hypermedia, travel facile or ruinous, and work a blurred mixture of more dependence and less meaning, it’s harder than ever to use those experiences to grow. But growing up, I have argued, has been dogged by dilemma ever since it was a real option. As Enlightenment philosophers knew, it’s a process that is as socially determined as it is profoundly individual.”

12. “When education is overwhelmed by hypermedia, travel facile or ruinous, and work a blurred mixture of more dependence and less meaning, it’s harder than ever to use those experiences to grow. But growing up, I have argued, has been dogged by dilemma ever since it was a real option. As Enlightenment philosophers knew, it’s a process that is as socially determined as it is profoundly individual.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Twentieth-century philosophy is not unique in its ability to confuse puzzles with problems.”

13. “Twentieth-century philosophy is not unique in its ability to confuse puzzles with problems.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Ordinary goodness is fraught with veins of vanity and self-interest and above all with pleasure – because goodness makes you feel more alive.”

14. “Ordinary goodness is fraught with veins of vanity and self-interest and above all with pleasure – because goodness makes you feel more alive.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Negotiating small differences is part of being a grownup; no one can tell you in advance where to put your foot down.”

15. “Negotiating small differences is part of being a grownup; no one can tell you in advance where to put your foot down.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “The dangers of sophistry and scholasticism are present in the possibility of philosophy itself.”

16. “The dangers of sophistry and scholasticism are present in the possibility of philosophy itself.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Given all the forces arrayed against it, no wonder Kant thought growing up to be more a matter of courage than knowledge: all the information in the world is no substitute for the guts to use your own judgement. And judgement can be learned – principally through the experience of watching others use it well – but it cannot be taught.”

17. “Given all the forces arrayed against it, no wonder Kant thought growing up to be more a matter of courage than knowledge: all the information in the world is no substitute for the guts to use your own judgement. And judgement can be learned – principally through the experience of watching others use it well – but it cannot be taught.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “What drives pure reason to efforts that seem to have neither end nor result?”

18. “What drives pure reason to efforts that seem to have neither end nor result?”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Dogma – ideas uninformed by experience – is a form of ingratitude.”

19. “Dogma – ideas uninformed by experience – is a form of ingratitude.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Is reality exhausted by what is, or does it leave room for all that could be?”

20. “Is reality exhausted by what is, or does it leave room for all that could be?”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “If life is a gift, then the more you partake in it, the more you show thanks.”

21. “If life is a gift, then the more you partake in it, the more you show thanks.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Kitsch is much more than a question of style; it’s a preference for consolation over truth. Disney’s version of reality is not just cleaned up, it’s pernicious. Unlike the best forms of art and philosophy, it undercuts the possibility of transformation because it portrays a world that’s just fine as it is – or as it will be by the time the credits come up.”

22. “Kitsch is much more than a question of style; it’s a preference for consolation over truth. Disney’s version of reality is not just cleaned up, it’s pernicious. Unlike the best forms of art and philosophy, it undercuts the possibility of transformation because it portrays a world that’s just fine as it is – or as it will be by the time the credits come up.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “It’s an embarrassing fact that we are more afraid of embarrassment than a host of other discomforts, but it isn’t less true for all that. How often have you refrained from voicing hope or indignation for fear of being dismissed as childish? Oddly enough, that fear is adolescent, born of a time when few things feel worse than being regarded as a less grown-up than your peers.”

23. “It’s an embarrassing fact that we are more afraid of embarrassment than a host of other discomforts, but it isn’t less true for all that. How often have you refrained from voicing hope or indignation for fear of being dismissed as childish? Oddly enough, that fear is adolescent, born of a time when few things feel worse than being regarded as a less grown-up than your peers.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “What the Enlightenment rejected in the South Sea islands was what it perceived as a stupor, the docile submission to whatever bit of the given is coming your way. And what’s coming your way is unlikely to be a breeze or a cow or a coconut, but a new kind of screen you can zap or click to create the illusion that life isn’t passing you by.”

24. “What the Enlightenment rejected in the South Sea islands was what it perceived as a stupor, the docile submission to whatever bit of the given is coming your way. And what’s coming your way is unlikely to be a breeze or a cow or a coconut, but a new kind of screen you can zap or click to create the illusion that life isn’t passing you by.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Reason drives your search to make sense of the world by pushing you to ask why things are as they are. For theoretical reason, the outcome of that search becomes science; for practical reason, the outcome is a more just world.”

25. “Reason drives your search to make sense of the world by pushing you to ask why things are as they are. For theoretical reason, the outcome of that search becomes science; for practical reason, the outcome is a more just world.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “A defence of the Enlightenment is a defence of the modern world, along with all its possibilities for self-criticism and transformation. If you’re committed to Enlightenment, you’re committed to understanding the world in order to improve it.”

26. “A defence of the Enlightenment is a defence of the modern world, along with all its possibilities for self-criticism and transformation. If you’re committed to Enlightenment, you’re committed to understanding the world in order to improve it.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Home is the normal – whatever place you happen to start from and return to without having to answer questions. It’s a metaphor that may seem to fit reduced expectations. We no longer seek towers that would reach to the heavens; we’ve abandoned attempts to prove that we live in a chain of being whose every link bears witness to the glory of God. We merely seek assurance that we find ourselves in a place where we know our way about.”

27. “Home is the normal – whatever place you happen to start from and return to without having to answer questions. It’s a metaphor that may seem to fit reduced expectations. We no longer seek towers that would reach to the heavens; we’ve abandoned attempts to prove that we live in a chain of being whose every link bears witness to the glory of God. We merely seek assurance that we find ourselves in a place where we know our way about.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “Vitality is not the denial of mortality, but the grown-up way of facing it.”

28. “Vitality is not the denial of mortality, but the grown-up way of facing it.”

— Susan Neiman

Susan Neiman Quote: “The capacity to return hate with love wipes reason off the map, at least for a while. I cannot understand it any more than I can understand how, knowing that story, black churches across America continue to open their doors and their hearts to white strangers again and again. What love and courage. What courage and love.”

29. “The capacity to return hate with love wipes reason off the map, at least for a while. I cannot understand it any more than I can understand how, knowing that story, black churches across America continue to open their doors and their hearts to white strangers again and again. What love and courage. What courage and love.”

— Susan Neiman

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