Iris Murdoch

The novel, the novel proper that is, is about people's treatment of each other, and so it is about human values.

Serious reflexion about one's own character will often induce a curious sense of emptiness; and if one knows another person well, one may sometimes intuit a similar void in him. (This is one of the strange privileges of friendship.)

The only satisfied rationalists today are blinkered scientists or Marxists.

All metaphysical theories are inconclusively vulnerable to positivist attack.

We know that the real lesson to be taught is that the human person is precious and unique; but we seem unable to set it forth except in terms of ideology and abstraction.

The role of philosophy might be said to be to extend and deepen the self-awareness of mankind.