Quotes by Philosophers - Page 27

As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares - the propensity and vocation to free thinking - this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity.

Immanuel Kant

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

Voltaire

The death of a billionaire is worth more to the media than the lives of a billion poor people.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The ancient Hebrews did not write the name of God. I often wish the Christians would follow suit, as never was a word more misused in writing and speaking than the name of the Lord.

Dagobert D. Runes

The deceitfulness of the heart of man appears in no one thing so much as this of spiritual pride and self-righteousness. The subtlety of Satan appears in its height, in his managing persons with respect to this sin. And perhaps one reason may be that here he has most experience; he knows the way of its coming in; he is acquainted with the secret springs of it: it was his own sin. Experience gives vast advantage in leading souls, either in good or evil.

Jonathan Edwards

Egoism... is not eliminated by economic reorganization or by material abundance. When basic needs are satisfied, new 'needs' emerge. In our society, people want no simply clothes, but fashionable clothes; not shelter, but a house to display their wealth and taste.

Peter Singer

Rules of taste enforce structures of power.

Susan Sontag

Greed is a contagious mental illness without which civilization as we know it would not have been possible.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When your view is criticized or even ridiculed on television, on radio talk show, or in a newspaper editorial, don't just react angrily. Take a moment to jot down on paper the person's main thesis and how that thesis was supported. Then do two things. First, assume the person is expressing at least some good points and try to identify them. This assumption may be false, but the search for common ground with intellectual opponents is a good habit. In the process of identifying these good points, try to argue against your own view. Second, try to state on paper exactly how you would argue against the view being expressed in an intellectually precise yet emotionally calm way.

J.P. Moreland

The path towards peace is not for the righteous, the ethical, the active and the compassionate to shit on the malicious, the complacent, the violent and the ignorant. The path towards peace is to be peaceful.

Ilyas Kassam

The first time I ever felt the necessity or inevitableness of verse was in the desire to reproduce the peculiar quality of feeling which is induced by the flat spaces and wide horizons of the virgin prairie of western Canada.

T.E. Hulme

The best way to destroy your enemies is to make them adopt your worldview

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

Henry David Thoreau

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Bertrand Russell

There is no love that is not self-love

Bangambiki Habyarimana

These days, though, tolerance means that you accept the other person's views as being true or legitimate. If you claim that someone is wrong, you can get accused of being intolerant--even though, ironically, the person making the charge of intolerance isn't being accepting of your beliefs.

Paul Copan

When all seems to be against you, remember, a ship sometimes has to sail against the current, not with it.

Matshona Dhliwayo

To be a Christian - a follower of Jesus Christ - is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom.

Cornel West

Nothing in life is worth,turning your back on,if you love it.

Albert Camus

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

Thomas Carlyle

Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can’t afford to dither when it comes to using their brains.

Robert Musil

The great take steps to success, the extraordinary take leaps to success, and the remarkable take flight to success.

Matshona Dhliwayo

I think, therefore I'll think.

Ayn Rand

An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality.

Robert M. Pirsig

It's futile to point the finger of condemnation and say, "Men... this" or "Women... that". Truth is, we are all guilty and innocent of many of life's trials.

T.F. Hodge

So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else's.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Every word that comes after "And the Lord told me. . . “is a pious lie

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Some of the conclusions that I draw are very different from the ethical views most people hold today. That, however, is not a ground for dismissing them. If every proposal for reform in ethics that differed from accepted moral views had been rejected for that reason alone, we would still be torturing heretics, enslaving members of conquered races, and treating women as the property of their husbands.

Peter Singer

what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto." (p123) Architecture of Happiness

Alain de Botton

A central part of the torturer’s craft is to make his job easier by stripping the victim of protective dignity.

Jonathan Glover

Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.

Voltaire

A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.

Jean-Paul Sartre

One who trusts God at all costs will be rewarded at all costs.

Matshona Dhliwayo

My love consumes me. Only my voice is left, a voice which has fallen in love with you whispers to you everywhere that I love you. Oh! Does it weary you to hear this voice? Everywhere it enfolds you; like an inexhaustible, shifting surround, I place my transparently reflected soul about your pure, deep being.”—Johannes the Seducer, from_Either/Or_

Søren Kierkegaard

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

Eric Hoffer

The Muse herself makes some men inspired, from whom a chain of other men is strung out who catch their own inspiration from theirs.

Plato

Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love a cow - for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love Him for their own advantage.

Meister Eckhart

Make a virtue of necessity.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Every man wherever he goes is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions which move with him like flies on a summer day.

Bertrand Russell

Instead of being regarded as intelligent or knowledgeable, many a woman would rather be regarded as beautiful or good in the kitchen; many a man, as handsome or good in bed.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

True happiness is to understand our duties toward God and man to enjoy the present without anxious dependence on the future not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have which is abundantly sufficient.

Seneca

It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

Jean-Paul Sartre

You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light.

Ayn Rand

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.

Aldous Huxley

To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist, existence is a science or a plan, which must end up in a certain way. But to a Christian, existence is a STORY, which may end up in any way. In a thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) the hero is not eaten by cannibals; but it is essential to the existence of the thrill that he MIGHT be eaten by cannibals. The hero must (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn't. In Christian morals, in short, it is wicked to call a man "damned": but it is strictly religious and philosophic to call him damnable.All Christianity concentrates on the man at the cross-roads. The vast and shallow philosophies, the huge syntheses of humbug, all talk about ages and evolution and ultimate developments. The true philosophy is concerned with the instant. Will a man take this road or that? - that is the only thing to think about, if you enjoy thinking.

G.K. Chesterton

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a woman tells you how terrible she looks, sincerely deny it, even if you agree.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Avoid impious people,run from fools,seek out the wise.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Everything that makes man feel that mystery envelops him makes him more intelligent.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

War is the worst way of gathering knowledge about a foreign culture.

Stanisław Lem

Battling wolves today strengthens you for battling lions tomorrow.

Matshona Dhliwayo

You have no power over your past,but you do over your present.You have no power over your history,but you do over your future.You have no power over your fortune,but you do over your actions.You have no power over your reputation,but you do over your character.You have no power over destiny,but you do over yourself.You have no power over anyone,but you do over your world.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Some people will each start investing more of their salary on ‘their’ house and spending less of it on ‘their’ car or cars only when they start being able to take ‘their’ house to work, funerals, weddings, etc.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

No matter how many leaves would the tree of your soul have in front of the intense heat in the words of Time in this world, they can never shade the eternity lost inside you.

Sorin Cerin

The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talking thunder; like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song, beautiful, beautiful, so that you cried.

Aldous Huxley

The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are.

Julius Evola

I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.

Albert Camus

Be a dreamer.Be a doer.Be a perseverer.Be a winner.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Reading maketh a full man; and writing an axact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he need have a present wit; and if he read little, he need have much cunning to seem to know which he doth not.

Francis Bacon

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