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Philosophy Quotes
"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."
38
"Tolerance was like one of those soothing creams-it drew out inflammation, it did away with the pain."
38
"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."
38
"The transitory and random quality of emotions ("Well, that's just the way I feel about it) is deeply connected to, and largely the cause of, random engagement of one's values and priorities. This very randomness and inconsistency is actually the cause of deeper suffering, primarily through the accumulation of addictions and the indulgence in reactions that are disproportionately small in comparison to what is really being sacrificed for them. Curiously-and a major theme in my own work over decades-the casual association of emotions to love is part of the insanity in all this."
38
"There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table."
38
"Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding."
38
"When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow."
38
"But, said Alice, if the world has absolutely no sense, who's stopping us from inventing one?"
38
"I can't stop thinking about what Caroline said to Minna about death. It isn't an infection, she said. She might be right. Then again, we've nested in the walls like bacteria. We've taken over the house, its insulation and its plumbing - we've made it our own. Or maybe it's life that's the infection: a feverish dream, a hallucination of feelings. Death is purification, a cleaning, a cure."
38
"The definition of tragedy is when people do not communicate yet struggle to conceal the pain."
38
"The very desire to be certain,to be secure,is the beginning of bondage.It's only when the mind is not caught in the net of certainty,and is not seeking certainty, that it is in a state of discovery."
38
"That speaking the words, even if true, had little power to change the inevitable or even make him feel much better."
38
"What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions - they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force."
38
"The answer of life struggles in between two kinds of people- those who live to dreamand those who dream to liveAsk them the question about death if they can truly conceive."
38
"The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation."
38
"How can we be "free as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can't."
38
"Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing."
38
"I am the Real, for I have not ceased to be real " through the Real."
38
"Is then no nook of English ground secureFrom rash assault?"
38
"Preserve a sense of proportion in your attitude to everything that pleases you, and make the most of them while they are at their best."
38
"The power of things inheres in the memories they gather up inside them, and also in the vicissitudes of our imagination, and our memory--of this there is no doubt."
38
"Come what will, one comfort's always left - that unfailing comfort is, it's all predestinated."
38
"I'm apt to get drunk on words...Ontology: the word about the essence of things, the word about being."
38
"I hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo know that for destruction iceIs also great."
38
"Little is the imagination of the person who believes that the future of another may be determined by his/her past. We are so much more than our minds and our memories! We are in fact transcendent souls. If you determine what is ahead by what you can see when you look back, then you will in fact never behold what actually stands in front of you."
38
"In the spiritual world many forms of the physical universe that are potentially effective can be perceived but with regard to time, we can observe only one form."
38
"The evangelistic ministry is a fight, not a frolic."
38
"One is free, and at the mercy of everything."
38
"...when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he's in touch with no images), but to true virtue [arete] (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he."
38
"There are several theories on sex and all of them are lies."
37
"In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all."
37
"All of a sudden their husband's dead and maybe a child is dead and they have absolutely nothing - and they're heading through the desert at night."
37
"It really is quite remarkable that Darfur has become a household name. I am gratified that's the case."
37
"If I were to adopt pure mechanism as a philosophy, there would be no way I could choose to be a scholar."
37
"It is only in virtue that you can discover, that you can live - not in the cultivation of a virtue, which merely brings about respectability, not understanding and freedom."
37
"Until you've lost your reputation you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is."
37
"We do not have a paradise on earth, it is riddled with so much sin and disease."
37
"I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I'm just trying to create a good one for myself."
37
"Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy."
37
"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years."
37
"It couldn't last. Everyone was just killing time. But if all they did was kill time, time would end up killing them."
37
"It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a Being beyond its limits capable of creating it."
37
"Do we exist because others perceive our existence, or is, indeed, our own affirmation enough?"
37
"It is not the balance in your check book that makes life count. It is the investment one makes in the lives of others."
37
"The subjective experience of intense pain ("That's all I can take) corresponds exactly to one's subjective experience in relation to truth ("That's all I can take)."
37
"Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
37
"The question I'm always asking myself is: are we masters or victims? Do we make history, or does history make us? Do we shape the world, or are we just shaped by it? The question of do we have agency in our lives or whether we are just passive victims of events is, I think, a great question, and one that I have always tried to ask."
37
"You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything."
37
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