Quotes by Philosophers - Page 10

A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole. Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse, and is at best but a brave stupidity; but let us hope that, like philosophy, it will always lure some rash spirits into its fatal depths.

Will Durant

Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

Thomas Paine

In every action we must look beyond the action at our past, present and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all these things.

Blaise Pascal

Time is a sort of river of passing events and strong is its current no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place and this too will be swept away.

Marcus Aurelius

It is important never to separate love and knowledge, compassion and wisdom. A wisdom without compassion is closed upon itself and does not bear fruit. A compassion without wisdom is a madness and a cause of suffering.

Jean-Yves Leloup

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk.

Jürgen Habermas

This is Nimrod, because of whose vile plan the world no longer speaks a single tongue.

Dante Alighieri

A man who says that no patriot should attack the [war] until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men…he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all…Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.

G.K. Chesterton

To be is to do.

Plato

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay - others will easily undertake the irksome work for me.That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind...

Immanuel Kant

The very comprehensibility of the world points to an intelligence behind the world. Indeed, science would be impossible if our intelligence were not adapted to the intelligibility of the world. The match between our intelligence and the intelligibility of the world is no accident. Nor can it properly be attributed to natural selection, which places a premium on survival and reproduction and has no stake in truth or conscious thought. Indeed, meat-puppet robots are just fine as the output of a Darwinian evolutionary process.

William A. Dembski

first build up your physique. then only you can get control over the mind.

Swami Vivekananda

Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.

Francis Bacon

If you fish without proper bait, you will only catch disappointment.

Matshona Dhliwayo

The entire Nazi war machine was only possible because of past, present and future violations of the non aggression principle (achievable only through government).

Stefan Molyneux

Every test successfully met is rewarded by some growth in intuitive knowledge, strengthening of character, or initiation into a higher consciousness.

Paul Brunton

There are many fish in the sea, but never let a good one swim away.

Matshona Dhliwayo

You become strong by lifting others up, not pulling them down.

Matshona Dhliwayo

We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.

Stanisław Lem

Enjoy this moment because it may not come again.

Osho

It is intoxicating joy for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and to forget himself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

Albert Camus

A star never lets anything dull its sparkle, not even darkness.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body.

Aldous Huxley

What is more, in fact, we very soon look upon the world as something whose non-existence is not only conceivable, but even preferable to its existence. Therefore our astonishment at it easily passes into a brooding over that *fatality* which could nevertheless bring about its existence, and by virtue of which such an immense force as is demanded for the production and maintenance of such a world could be directed so much against its own interest and advantage."―from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. In Two Volumes, Volume II, p. 171

Arthur Schopenhauer

Genius: Range of mind, power of imagination, and responsiveness of soul: this is genius. The man of genius has a soul with greater range, can therefore be struck by the feelings of all beings, is concerned with everything in nature, and never receives an idea that does not evoke a feeling. Everything stirs him and everything is retained within him.When the soul has been moved by an object itself, it is even more affected by the memory of the object. But in a man of genius imagination goes further: it recalls ideas with a more vivid feeling than it received them, because to these ideas are connected a thousand others more appropriate to arouse the feeling.

Jean-François de Saint-Lambert

As I begin to recognise that the Negro is the symbol of sin, I catch myself hating the Negro. But then I recognise that I am a Negro. There are two ways out of this conflict. Either I ask others to pay no attention to my skin, or else I want them to be aware of it. I try then to find value for what is bad--since I have unthinkingly conceded that the black man is the colour of evil. In order to terminate this neurotic situation, in which I am compelled to choose an unhealthy, conflictual solution, fed on fantasies, hostile, inhuman in short, I have only one solution: to rise above this absurd drama that others have staged around me, to reject the two terms that are equally unacceptable, and through one human being, to reach out for the universal. When the Negro dives--in other words, goes under--something remarkable occurs.

Frantz Fanon

I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added in a lower tone, "I ate my own wickedness.

Aldous Huxley

An ounce of faith can overcome a ton of fear.

Matshona Dhliwayo

The only way to survive such shitty times, if you ask me, is to write and read big, fat books, you know? And I’m writing now another book on Hegelian dialectics, subjectivity, ontology, quantum physics and so on. That’s the only way to survive. Like Lenin. I will use his example. You know what Lenin did, in 1915, when World War I exploded? He went to Switzerland and started to read Hegel.

Slavoj Žižek

What distances can be explored without God?

Sorin Cerin

Stretched and skewedTap of the 8-ball and the cueScratches fall throughThey are the scars of you

Criss Jami

In an age in which the media broadcast countless pieces of foolishness, the educated man is defined not by what he knows, but by what he doesn't know.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

The heart has reasons which reason cannot understand.

Blaise Pascal

There’s no such thing as a good or bad person: there are just people who have each been or seem to have been good or bad to you, someone, or some people, thus far.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The body should be strong enough to obey the mind; a good servant must be strong. I know that intemperance stimulates the passions; in course of time it also destroys the body; fasting and penance often produce the same results in an opposite way. The weaker the body, the more imperious its demands; the stronger it is, the better it obeys. All sensual passions find their home in effeminate bodies; the less satisfaction they can get the keener their sting.

Rousseau Jean-Jacques 1712-1778

Higher thoughts lead to a higher life.

Matshona Dhliwayo

All individuals have moral deficiencies, and when introducing these to reality one not only strengthens himself but also the confidence of others in the human exigency for Christ due to a reflection throughout the body of Christ.

Criss Jami

Sometimes it happens that you become one, in some rare moment. Watch the ocean, the tremendous wildness of it--and suddenly you forget your split, your schizophrenia; you relax. Or, moving in the Himalayas, seeing the virgin snow on the Himalayan peaks, suddenly a coolness surrounds you and you need not be false because there is no other human being to be false to. You fall together.

Osho

What is it: is man only a blunder of God or God only a blunder of man?

Friedrich Nietzsche

(Evolution) general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire...They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear.

Ayn Rand

Life is rather a short walk through eternity. Be they seeds, pups or infants, on the trek they all pick up weight, sensitivity and awareness. Then, much before the end of the run, they deteriorate, lead, legs and lungs. The tragicomedy of existence: the long walk of slow decay.

Dagobert D. Runes

It is not as if an 'I' exists independently over here and then simply loses a 'you' over there, especially if the attachment to 'you' is part of what composes who 'I' am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who 'am' I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost 'you' only to discover that 'I' have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost 'in' you, that for which I have no vocabulary, is a relationality that is composed neither exclusively of myself nor you, but is to be conceived as *the tie* by which those terms are differentiated and related.

Judith Butler

Ah, brothers, this God which I created was human work and human madness, like all gods!He was human, and only a poor piece of man and Ego: this phantom came to me from my own fire and ashes, that is the truth! It did not come from the ‘beyond’!

Friedrich Nietzsche

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

Aristotle

He who unlocks his greatest potential will reap his greatest treasures.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Always be yourself and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and try to duplicate it.

Bruce Lee

One of the most common and most dangerous misbeliefs is that it is impossible for someone to be stupid just because they are a doctor or a lawyer.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There would definitely be way fewer instances of cheating, if the average couple did not have sex only when the woman feels like it.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?

Sam Harris

The path of Tao is not that of sudden enlightenment. It is not like Zen. Zen is sudden enlightenment, Tao is gradual growth.

Osho

When we see a good-looking woman with a not-so-good-looking man, we assume that the man must have a good bank balance. When we see a good-looking man with a not-so-good-looking woman, we assume that she must be good in bed.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There are some things that, once lost, no amount of money can regain. Thus to justify the destruction of an ancient forest on the grounds that it will earn us substantial export income is problematic, even if we could invest that income and increase its value from year to year; for no matter how much we increase its value, its could never buy back the link with the past represented by the forest.

Peter Singer

You will live wisely if you are happy in your lot.

Horace

Not every happy person is married, and, Not every married person is happy.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.

Rebecca Goldstein

…because it is natural to touch more often the parts that hurt.

Seneca

Never rebel for the sake of rebelling, but always rebel for the sake of truth.

Criss Jami

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