Quotes by Philosophers - Page 8

To the man of science, on his unassuming and laborious travels, which must often enough be journeys through the desert, there appear those glittering mirages called 'philosophical systems'; with bewitching deceptive power they show the solution of all enigmas and the freshest draught of the true water of life to be near at hand; his heart rejoices, and it seems to the weary traveller that his lips already touch the goal of all the perseverance and sorrows of the scientific life... Other natures again, may well grow exceedingly ill-humoured and curse the salty taste which these apparitions leave behind in the mouth and from which arises a raging thirst – without one having been brought so much as a step nearer to any kind of spring.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Wisdom is the recovery of innocence at the far end of experience.

David Bentley Hart

If you understand others you are smart.If you understand yourself you are illuminated.If you overcome others you are powerful.If you overcome yourself you have strength.If you know how to be satisfied you are rich.If you can act with vigor, you have a will.If you don't lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.If you die without loss, you are eternal.

Lao Tzu

In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America, and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter, and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. -

Peter Singer

Modern man thinks he loses something-time-when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains- except kill it.

Erich Fromm

Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.

Voltaire

I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out.

Criss Jami

Life without absorbing occupation is hell.

Elbert Hubbard

Je hay entre autres vices, cruellement la cruauté, et par nature et par jugement, comme l'extreme de tous les vices.

Michel de Montaigne

All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions andmodes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education established andcontrolled by the State should only exist, if it exist at all, as one amongmany competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence.

John Stuart Mill

Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose.

Simone Weil

The sexual act without love never bridges the gap between two human beings, except momentarily.

Erich Fromm

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.

Voltaire

Think honestly.Think humbly.Think honorably.Think happily.

Matshona Dhliwayo

A golden spoon is useless when the soup bowl is empty.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Master Dongguo asked Zhuangzi, "This thing called the Way - where does it exist?"Zhuangzi said, "There's no place it doesn't exist.""Come," said Master Dongguo, "you must be more specific!""It is in the ant.""As low a thing as that?""It is in the panic grass.""But that's lower still!""It is in the tiles and shards.""How can it be so low?""It is in the piss and shit!

Zhuangzi

Enough pain will keep you humble.Enough grief will keep you compassionate.Enough trouble will keep you strong.Enough hardship will keep you grateful.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Happiness is something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else.

Aldous Huxley

Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.

Bertrand Russell

For when man is faced with a curse he answers, "I'll take care of my problems." And he puts everything to work to become powerful, to keep the curse from having its effects. He creates the arts and the sciences, he raises an army, he constructs chariots, he builds cities. The spirit of might is a response to the divine curse.

Jacques Ellul

Without a purpose nothing should be done.

Marcus Aurelius

Any leadership that is observant and committed to its people, will always find better ways to solve problems.

Gift Gugu Mona

[W]e need not become fixated upon our own suffering, whatever its origin. We offer it up, thus participating in the well-being of the universe. When we experience an illness or depression not as our own but as the universe’s, we are one with all beings who experience this kind of suffering. (78)

Jean-Yves Leloup

...one cannot deal with pure evil, with the naked, full-conscious evil that neither has nor seeks justification.

Ayn Rand

Some lessons are learnt the hard way, but worth it.

Gift Gugu Mona

What you do for others today you have done for yourself tomorrow.

Matshona Dhliwayo

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Whenever explaining an event, we must choose from three competing modes of explanation. These are regularity, chance, and design... To attribute an event to design is to say that it cannot reasonably be referred to either regularity or chance.

William A. Dembski

The soul's rainbow has more colors than the sky's stars.

Matshona Dhliwayo

The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot.

Criss Jami

As commonly practiced, philosophy is the attempt to find good reasons for conventional beliefs.

John N Gray

Logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.

Ayn Rand

It's just because I have picked a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude.

G.K. Chesterton

The true basis and propaedeutic for all knowledge of human nature is the persuasion that a man's actions are, essentially and as a whole, not directed by his reason and its designs; so that no one becomes this or that because he wants to, though he want to never so much, but that his conduct proceeds from his inborn and inalterable character, is narrowly and in particulars determined by motivation, and is thus necessarily the product of these two factors.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The cold neutrality of an impartial judge.

Edmund Burke

Macaulay is well for awhile but one wouldn't live under Niagara.

Thomas Carlyle

The road to failure is wide.The road to mediocrity is smooth.The road to success is bumpy.The road to genius is narrow.The road to greatness is steep.

Matshona Dhliwayo

People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.

Giacomo Leopardi

Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.

Emil M. Cioran

The apologist is most entrusted with apologetics when capable of arguing his opponent's position better than his opponent.

Criss Jami

There are no free lunches in philosophy any more than in real life.

Jaegwon Kim

Suffering "buys" something, and this something possesses a certain value for all of us, for common consciousness; by suffering we buy the right to judge.

Lev Shestov

A broke man’s lover doesn’t feel ‘loved’ on her Birthday, Christmas, and, on Valentine’s Day.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.

Epictetus

Why do women use make-up? They know the world is a make-up

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Let's say you're walking around and you find a watch on the ground. As you examine it, you marvel at the intricately complex interweaving of its parts, a means to an end. Surely you wouldn't think this marvel would have come about by itself. The watch must have a maker. Just as the watch has such complex means to an end, so does nature to a much greater extent. Just look at the complexity of the human eye. Thus we must conclude that nature has a maker too.

William Paley

Somethings are simply better left the way they are.

Bangambiki Habyarimana

After a long time in laboratories, psychologists have discovered the holy grail of a happy marriage: I applied it and it didn't work

Bangambiki Habyarimana

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the destiny of things real to destroy those that are artiﬁce.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Closing one’s eyes when praying doesn’t increase the odds of the prayer being answered. It merely decreases the odds of being distracted.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Socrates

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them then he is always stirring up some wary or other in order that the people may require a leader.

Plato

The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind.

Peter Rollins

Consider a man’s good qualities, and consider his faults; and judge his character by that which is more.

Thiruvalluvar

Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Of all your troubles, great and small, the greatest are the ones that don't happen at all.

Thomas Carlyle

This world's a bubble.

Sir Francis Bacon

The critical issues here concern what is right, what is just -- not the balancing of benefits.

Carl Cohen

Thus, every entity, even if it is a defective one, in so far as it is an entity, is good. In so far as it is defective, it is evil.

Augustine of Hippo

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