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Philosophy Quotes
"If you are what you eat, you are what you see and hear."
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"You aren't old enough to have such regrets."Pain doesn't respect age, my lady."
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"What is the meaning of it all, of this...of this world?'Mystery', I heard in my thoughts, or perhaps, 'mercy', but I wasn't certain of either."
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"Those who consider the inessential to be essential And see the essential as inessential Don't reach the essential, Living in the field of wrong intention."
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"The purpose of revelation is to alter your experience."
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"It's exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth."
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"Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it. You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth."
34
"There is a coherence in things, a stability; something... is immune from change and shines out... in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby."
33
"Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities."
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"The ground is level at the foot of the cross."
33
"You are hurrying to the sweet place, To the nonsense chasing your spirit And in the nonsense you look for answers."
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"So resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity."
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"My personal philosophy is I'm running a 100-yard dash, and I haven't reached the end."
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"Foucault was the one person I met in France that I could talk to. He was a mensch. You know whether you agree with him or not because you know what he is saying."
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"Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it."
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"Full surely there is a blessedness beyond the grave for those who have already entered on it here, and in no other form than that wherein they know it here, at any moment."
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"To become the spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life."
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"Righteousness is easy in retrospect."
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"The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory."
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"Do it or don't do it but get on with it..."
33
"The things we don't stress tend to turn out best. Trust and let go."
33
"I said to him that Zululand sounded fine, but that every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map."
33
"Who am I? I am the spine that the mountains hang upon! I am the tears that the rivers cry! I am the lungs that breathe the wind! I am the wolf that kills the stag, the hawk that kills the mouse, the spider that kills the fly! I am the stag, the mouse and the fly that are eaten! I am the snake of the world devouring its tail! I am everything untamed and untameable!"
33
"We're so busy watching out for what's just ahead of us that we don't take time to enjoy where we are."
33
"He's seeing the actual Milky Way streaked across the sky. The whole of his entire galaxy, right there in front of him. Billions and billions of stars. Billions and billions of worlds. All of them, all of those seemingly endless possibilities, not fictional, but real, out there, existing, right now. There is so much more out there than just the world he knows, so much more than his tiny Washington town, so much more than even London. Or England. Or hell, for that matter.So much more that he'll never see. So much more that he'll never get to. So much that he can only glimpse enough of to know that it's forever beyond his reach."
33
"It's amazing how we can hurt others, especially those close to us . . .subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which wives belittle husbands and vice versa."
33
"Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone."
33
"Only in the few universes that are like ours would intelligent beings develop and ask the question: "Why is the universe the way we see it? The answer is then simple: If it had been any different, we would not be here!"
33
"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."
33
"Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt."
33
"Either we are adrift in chaos or we are individuals, created, loved, upheld and placed purposefully, exactly where we are. Can you believe that? Can you trust God for that?"
33
"If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world."
33
"I don't act, I don't direct, I don't design."
33
"The universe that suckled us is a monster that does not care if we live or die--it does not care if it itself grinds to a halt. It is a beast running on chance and death, careening from nowhere to nowhere. It is fixed and blind, a robot programmed to kill. We are free and seeing; we can only try to outwit it at every turn to save our lives."
33
"Like tiny gods, all that we say and do holds a power so great that any one of us in any given moment can be responsible for the birth of a new civilization or the collapse of our own."
33
"From the union of power and money,from the union of power and secrecy,from the union of government and science,from the union of government and art,from the union of science and money,from the union of ambition and ignorance,from the union of genius and war,from the union of outer space and inner vacuity,the Mad Farmer walks quietly away."
33
"The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not."
33
"It's the sensation that gives rise to ego or personal identity. All the external and internal experiences of life are experienced only with the sensation."
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"The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;We find delight in the most loathsome things;Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance."
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"Unfortunately for humanity, God is patient enough to actually enjoy watching the grass grow."
33
"I believe in the immortality of all creatures."
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"It is only the forcible propagation of conventional Christianity that makes the agnostic so bitter toward the church. He knows that all the doctrines cannot possibly be true, but he would view them with toleration if he were asked merely to let them alone for the benefit of the masses whom they can help and succour."
33
"To recognize our bias toward error should teach us modesty and reflection, and to forgive it should help us avoid the inhumanity of thinking we ourselves are not as fallible as those who, in any instance, seem most at fault. Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom. Nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again."
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"For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end."
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"Hence, you see your faith, you see your doubt, you see your desire and will to learn, and when you are induced by divine authority to believe what you do not see, you see at one that you believe these things; you analyze and discern all this."
33
"Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer."
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"What was desire anyway, when examined in the clear light of day? Was it the way a woman searched for her clothes in the morning, or the manner in which a man might watch her sit before the mirror and comb her hair? Was it a pale November dawn, when ice formed on windowpanes and crows called from the bare black trees? Or was it the way a person might yield to the night, setting forth on a path so unexpected that daylight would never again be completely clear?"
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"Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror."
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"Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so."
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