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Philosophy Quotes
"One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare."
42
"If one wanted to crush and destroy a man entirely, to mete out to him the most terrible punishment ... all one would have to do would be to make him do work that was completely and utterly devoid of usefulness and meaning."
41
"Satan does not care how much you theorize about Christianity or how much you profess to know Christ. What he opposes vigorously is the way you live Christ."
40
"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth."
39
"There are truths that are not for all men nor for all times."
39
"Philosophy is not a theory but an activity."
38
"Many parents preach to their children but do not set good examples. Parents want the children to do as they say, not as they do."
38
"I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it."
38
"To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's."
38
"Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking..."
38
"The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth."
37
"The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that."
37
"Man is the cruelest animal," says Zarathustra. "When gazing at tragedies, bull-fights, crucifixations he hath hitherto felt happier than at any other time on Earth. And when he invented Hell...lo, Hell was his Heaven on Earth"; he could put up with suffering now, by contemplating the eternal punishment of his oppressors in the other world."
36
"Death wasn't part of God's original plan for humanity, and the Bible calls death an enemy - the last enemy to be destroyed."
35
"The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game. And that's always been my philosophy."
35
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date."
35
"It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise."
34
"I loathe it when they [English teachers] are bullied by no-nothing parents or cowardly school boards."
33
"In earlier periods of history, adolescence was virtually unknown . . . Today, the span between childhood and adulthood may extend over ten years. Deferred adulthood is synonymous with deferred responsibility."
33
"The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain."
32
"Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death."
32
"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."
32
"I lose faith in mathematics, logical and rigid. What with those that even zero doesn't accept?"
31
"No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don't ask, walk!"
31
"To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."
31
"As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all."
31
"Right time, right place, right moment."
31
"I am not here, I am somewhere else, my body is here but mind is in the sky"
31
"All men are poets at heart."
31
"We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs."
30
"It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be."
30
"Man made God in his own image."
30
"Every year during their High Holy Days, the Jewish community reminds us all of our need for repentance and forgiveness."
30
"My first world is humanity. My second world is humanism. And, I live in the third world being merely a human."
29
"Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers."
29
"Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once. Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!"
29
"(About Sartre...)His death does not separate us. My death will not bring us together again. That is how things are. It is in itself splendid that we were able to live our lives in harmony for so long."
29
"Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."
29
"People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching."
29
"I consist of body and soul - in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgealbe would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body."
29
"Long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there-not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would rather die."
29
"When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics."
28
"Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought."
28
"All wickedness comes from weakness. The child is wicked only because he is weak. Make him strong, he will be good. He who could do everything would never do harm."
27
"God's will is for us to commit our lives to Christ and follow Him. God's will also is that we avoid sin."
27
"Jesus invited us not to a picnic, but to a pilgrimage. He offered us, not an excursion, but an execution. Our Savior said that we would have to be ready to die to self, sin, and the world."
27
"Grief turns us inward, but compassion turns us outward, and that's what we need when grief threatens to crush us. The Bible says, “Carry each other's burdens” [Galatians 6:2 NIV]."
27
"When Jesus hung on the cross, a great unseen cosmic battle raged in the heavens-and in the end, Christ triumphed over all the forces of evil and death and hell."
27
"In the struggle between yourself and the world, side with the world."
27
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