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Philosophy Quotes
"A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages."
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"Each person does see the world in a different way. There is not a single, unifying, objective truth. We're all limited by our perspective."
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"Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco."
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"Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career."
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"The thought came over me that never would one full and absolute moment, containing all the others, justify my life, that all of my instants would be provisional phases, annihilators of the past turned to face the future, and that beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial, we were nobody."
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"By thinking of things you could understand them."
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"May God us keepFrom Single vision and Newton's sleep."
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"Having unthoughtful thoughts for me is unthinkable, so much so that I cannot even think about that."
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"The ending can only start with the beginning and end with self estrangement, as to become once again his own/old self. This is why every man is a continuous ending."
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"The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or of the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to rearrange this essential vision into satisfying patterns, getting himself as little dirty in the process as possible."
38
"The first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life."
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"It comforts me to think that if we are created beings the thing that created us would have to be greater than us, so much greater, in fact, that we would not be able to understand it. It would have to be greater than the facts of our reality and so it would seem to us, looking out from within our reality that it would contradict reason. But reason itself would suggest it would have to be greater than reality or it would not be reasonable."
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"The world is as fair as you perceive it to be."
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"To enjoy life, you don't need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren't as serious as you make them out to be."
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"The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination."
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"Honesty has become the second best policy with your spouse discretions apply elsewhere."
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"Where we come from... is not nearly as startling as where we are going."
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"We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres or a little money and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth and for the great benefits of our being our life health and reason we look upon ourselves as under no obligation."
38
"I have an unshakable belief that mankind's higher nature is on the whole still dormant. The greatest souls reveal excellencies of mind and heart which their lesser fellows possess-hidden, it is true, but there all the same."
38
"It had been my father's way to remove obstructions, to repair washouts in old trails, to leave each trail better than he had found it. "Tread lightly on the paths," he had told me. "Others will come when you have gone."That was how I would remember my father. There was never a place he walked that was not the better for his having passed. For every tree he cut down he planted two."
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"Mind is not your brain, but mind is subtle clothing that is spread over your entire physical body and doesn't limit itself only with the physical part of the brain."
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"In making a clear distinction between desire (answer) and yearning (question), we inevitably end up back at personal purpose."
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"She didn't know what would happen because of this. But she knew that today, she would hurt no one. She threw back her blankets and though only of today."
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"How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?"
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"To believe a thing is not to make it true."
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"The inability to rise above one's inherited ism and ideology makes one live and die a fool, just a folly."
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"Like a snake sheds its skin, we are capable of getting rid of assembled habits, creating space to call matters into question. Instead of the Shakespearian " To be or not to be " we could favor " to become or not to become". By "becoming", we challenge the range of possibilities in our life and go beyond the merely "being". We can retreat, then, from the imprisonment of a deadly routine, acquire an identity and develop our personality. ['Man without Qualities']"
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"I would suggest, merely as a metaphor here, but also as the basis for a scientific program to investigate the computational capacity of the universe, that this is also a reasonable explanation for why the universe is complex."
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"The greatest stupidity in man is not his arrogance or ignorance, it he failing to realize who he is."
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"Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand."
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"If we expect to "know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, we may have a hard time seeing the whole picture, since the truth is a willful construction that allows us often merely to "guess. ['Hinter der Mattscheibe']"
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"One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction " nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead."
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"It is fundamental to both Taoist and Confucian thought that the natural man is to be trusted, and from their standpoint it appears that the Western mistrust of human nature-whether theological or technological-is a kind of schizophrenia. It would be impossible, in their view, to believe oneself innately evil without discrediting the very belief, since all the notions of a perverted mind would be perverted notions."
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"Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh."
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"Man is worse than an animal when he is an animal."
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"A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue but the parent of all other virtues."
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"Science gives man what he needs.But magic gives him what he wants."
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"Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap."
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"Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant, I act under orders."
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"Practice your self what you preach. ~ Titus Maccius Plautus~ When we offer guidance to someone we can hear the pearls of wisdom we're sharing with our self. Where we see room for improvement in someone else, we see room for improvement in our self. The direction we tell others to go may be the direction we most want to go. When we understand and appreciate that we are an expression of the perfection of the universe, we become speechless with unconditional LOVE."
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"Time. Either you are for it or against it. So be here now. Not later."
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"Cursing, telling smutty stories, smearing the good name of another, and referring irreverently to God and the Scriptures may be considered as coming under the expression corrupt speech. Our speech is to be clean, pure, and wholesome."
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"It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something."
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"He who replies to words of doubtdoth put the light of knowledge out."
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"What is the purpose of wealth if it cannot serve an ideal that enhances humanity and betters the lives of the people, even if that means those we have never met before in our lives?"
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"To be or not to be what exactly?"
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"This concept of the afterlife really functions as a substitute for wisdom. It functions as a substitute for really absorbing our predicament, which is that everyone is going to die; there are circumstances that are just catastrophically unfair; evil sometimes wins and injustice sometimes wins, and that the only justice we are going to find in the world is the justice we make.We have an ethical responsibility to absorb this, really down to the soles of our feet. And this notion of an afterlife, of how it's all going to work out and its all part of god's plan, is a way of shirking that responsibility."
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"Tolerance was like one of those soothing creams-it drew out inflammation, it did away with the pain."
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"So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right."
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