Quotes by Philosophers - Page 4

Elbert Hubbard

When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision. Always I reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates, then and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

David Hume

Perceptual fields are limited by the attractor patterns that they're associated with. This means that the capacity to recognize significant factors in a given situation is limited by the context that arises from the level of consciousness of the observer. The motive of the viewer automatically determines what is seen; causality is, therefore, ascribed to factors that are, in fact, a function of the biases of the observer and aren't at all instrumental in the situation itself.

David Hawkins

There is one way, then, in which a man can be free from all anxiety about the fate of his soul - if in life he has abandoned bodily pleasures and adornments, as foreign to his purpose and likely to do more harm than good, and has devoted himself to the pleasures of acquiring knowledge, and so by decking his soul not with a borrowed beauty but with its own - with self-control, and goodness, and courage, and liberality, and truth - has fitted himself to await his journey in the next world.

Socrates

There can be no one better than yourself, so be the best version of you because no one is born to represent another.

Gift Gugu Mona

Creating is the closest thing to being immortal.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Each experience of love nudges us toward the Story of Interbeing, because it only fits into that story and defies the logic of Separation.

Charles Eisenstein

To spoil means to put no limit on caprice, to give one the impression that everything is permitted to him and that he has no obligations. The young child exposed to this regime has no experience of its own limits. By reason of the removal of all external restraint, all clashing with other things, he comes actually to believe that he is the only one that exists, and gets used to not considering others, especially not considering them as superior to himself. This feeling of another's superiority could only be instilled into him by someone who, being stronger than he is, should force him to give up some desire, to restrict himself, to restrain himself. He would then have learned this fundamental discipline: "Here I end and here begins another more powerful than I am. In the world, apparently, there are two people: I myself and another superior to me.

Ortega y Gasset

Today we take for granted that we are we. Yet the doubt about ourselves still exists, or has even grown.

Erich Fromm

From this arises the following question: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other, but because they are difficult to combine, it is far better to be loved than feared if you cannot be both.

Niccolò Machiavelli

A drop of faith can create a hailstorm of success.

Matshona Dhliwayo

To perceive is to suffer.

Aristotle

Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.

Herbert Marcuse

A friend is as it were a second self.

Cicero

Liberties aren't given, they are taken.

Aldous Huxley

Today is not just another ordinary day. It is an opportunity to do, or say, something that just might inspire someone to greater becoming...especially a wayward youth.

T.F. Hodge

To be happy: the simple pursue pleasure, the common pursue riches, the uncommon pursue knowledge, and the exceptional pursue wisdom.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Consciousness reigns but doesn't govern.

Paul Valéry

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

Baruch Spinoza

If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is brave towards God and a coward towards men.

Michel de Montaigne

It is never a crime to steal the heart of someone you love.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Procrastination threatens critics’ livelihood.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.

Criss Jami

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too.

Alain de Botton

Even if there are instances in which it can be mistook by onlookers, never fool yourself into using misunderstood genius as an excuse to be a fool.

Criss Jami

That's a rhetorical question, and trying to answer rhetorical questions instead of being cowed by them is a good habit to cultivate.

Daniel C. Dennett

The great are like a rubber ball; the harder they hit the ground, the higher they rise.

Matshona Dhliwayo

They happen only when you are distant,aloof. They happen, they cannot be brought. They happen you cannot force them to happen. They are spontaneous happenings.

Osho

There is a deep sense in which we are all ghost towns. We are all haunted by the memory of those we love, those with whom we feel we have unfinished business. While they may no longer be with us, a faint aroma of their presence remains, a presence that haunts us until we make our peace with them and let them go. The problem, however, is that we tend to spend a great deal of energy in attempting to avoid the truth. We construct an image of ourselves that seeks to shield us from a confrontation with our ghosts. Hence we often encounter them only late at night, in the corridors of our dreams.

Peter Rollins

In the letters section, a Scot reminds his readers of the ‘Glorious Alliance’ between France and Mary Queen of Scots, which explains why Scotland should not share the rabid Europhobia of Englishmen.

Bruno Latour

There are those who don’t believe in God and yet do good. There are those who believe in God and kill for that belief; those who prepare for war because they claim they want peace, and so on. So one has to ask oneself what need there is to believe at all in anything, though this doesn’t deny the extraordinary mystery of life. But belief is a word, a thought, and this is not the thing, anymore than your name is actually you.Through experience you hope to touch the truth of your belief, to prove it to yourself, but this belief conditions your experience. It isn’t that the experience comes to prove the belief, but rather that the belief begets the experience. Your belief in God will give you the experience of what you call God. You will always experience what you believe and nothing else.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The first professor you meet in life is your mother; the second is hardship, and the last is death.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Time is the Mind of Space.

Samuel Alexander

I live nearby a graveyard, that's where I get all my inspiration for wisdom and life

Bangambiki Habyarimana

One entered the world, Denis pursued, having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fit life...Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, even the most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideas, everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled. Was it surprising that one was miserable, horribly unhappy?

Aldous Huxley

It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I don't look girls in the eyes, I am afraid to fall in love

Bangambiki Habyarimana

↑ top up position down↓ bottom“The corruption of religious leaders, who were expected to be the source of spiritual force and regeneration, is the last step in the decay of a community.

Fazlur Rahman

Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.

Richard M. Rorty

Perfectionists are patient,the diligent are persevering,and the relentless are successful.

Matshona Dhliwayo

To claim that one can be happy without being free is to prove that one has no idea what happiness means.

Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

In some cases, I am able to respect what so many call bigots. Such people have a more solid foundation for drawing their lines when it comes to the security of their ways and quite possibly the security of mankind. They rely on something that has worked to get man this far without placing ideals blindly driven by emotion first; they have a sure line and they say, 'No.' That, in a sense, is something I find to be highly respectable.

Criss Jami

Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for a kindness.

Marcus Annaeus Seneca

It's a harrowing experience to see death approaching in haste towards you, what is hell but confronting your own mortality

Bangambiki Habyarimana

The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.

G.K. Chesterton

What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

John Cage

Be knowledgeable.Be logical.Be affable.Be trustable.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.

Epictetus

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.

G.K. Chesterton

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

Niccolò Machiavelli

With the daguerreotype everyone will be able to have their portrait taken—formerly it was only the prominent—and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same, so we shall only need one portrait.

Søren Kierkegaard

When people see some things as beautiful,other things become ugly.When people see some things as good,other things become bad.

Lao Tzu

Your mind is a weapon. Your heart is an asset. Your soul is a treasure. Your life is a jewel.

Matshona Dhliwayo

A path is made by walking on it.

Zhuangzi

There is a greater Christian faith than one which settles for the temporal happiness, and that is the augmentation of faith. The more faithful you become, the harder the obstacles get; but the harder the obstacles get, the tougher your spine grows; and the tougher your spine grows, the less dependent you are on man's approval. I came to know this about Christianity when valuing faith before comfort.

Criss Jami

To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’ The meaning of the ‘I’ is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person. A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.

Ayn Rand

National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.

Umberto Eco

A number of our scientists boast intelligence but lack wisdom. I find those to be the predictable ones.

Criss Jami

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