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Philosophy Quotes
"The cause of all trouble, the root of all sorrow, the dread of every man lies in this one small word-sin. It has crippled the nature of man . . .It has caused man to be caught in the devil's trap."
13
"Prayer serves a dual purpose, the blessing of man and the glory of God."
13
"In the essence of truth lies deceit."
12
"I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real."
12
"Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist."
12
"Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed."
12
"A flower does not fulfill its destiny until it blooms, and a star does not fulfill its destiny until it shines."
12
"No one is exempt from the touch of tragedy: neither the Christian nor the non-Christian; neither the rich nor the poor; neither the leader or the commoner. Crossing all racial, social, political, and economic barriers, suffering reaches out to unite mankind."
12
"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."
12
"The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched."
12
"We learn and experience ourselves only through suffering, everything else is humbug."
12
"All existing things are really one. We regard those that are beautiful and rare as valuable, and those that are ugly as foul and rotten The foul and rotten may come to be transformed into what is rare and valuable, and the rare and valuable into what is foul and rotten."
12
"He rose and stood tottering in that cold dark with his arms held out for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings. An old chronicle. To seek out the upright. No fall but preceded by a declination... Upright to what? Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars were common satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must."
12
"The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one's designs to one's means."
12
"All interpretation or observation of reality is necessarily fiction. In this case, the problem is that man is a moral animal abandoned in an amoral universe and condemned to a finite existence with no other purpose than to perpetuate the natural cycle of the species. It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality, at least for a human being. We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake. As I said, pure biology."
12
"Energy defines life not flesh and blood. WE are infinite energies experiencing infinity. Through a finite aperture."
12
"Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet, yet we think we can have something great - thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand."
12
"Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom."
12
"Possible impossibility emerges From an impossible possibility, Or possibly, impossible possibility Blooms from the impossibly possible impossibility."
12
"Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?"
12
"It is a sound like loneliness-enough to let you know you're there, but not enough to fill you with life."
12
"Truth is my weapon. Knowledge is my armor. Wisdom is my strategist. Love is my warrior."
12
"The key point about life is that in the end nothing really matters."
12
"When religion ceases to be speculative and becomes factual and "true", it will become science. Science can be used to prove or disprove opinions, beliefs and accusations. Until any religion crosses that line, who is anyone to use their religion to judge others?"
12
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
12
"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."
12
"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."
12
"Consciousness and free will are necessary in order for human beings to live meaningful lives by supplying agency to our intentions. The innate capacity for consciousness and directed free will plays a linchpin role in making human curiosity a viable concept. We would lack an ability to learn without an inquisitive mind and the ability to act. A premeditated act of human free will enables us to apply what we learn and make calculated adjustments when our plans need alteration. Human beings' cognitive processes and a liberal range of free will allows us to study the past for learning rubrics to employ in the present and cogitate upon a future course of action."
12
"The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that engendered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them."
12
"Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time."
12
"For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages."
12
"Life is but a sleep disturbed By dreaming."
12
"We have to cease to think, if we refuse to do it in the prison house of language; for we cannot reach further than the doubt which asks whether the limit we see is really a limit."
12
"I am sustained by the certainty that life has meaning. As does death."
12
"If only we studied the stars as much as we study our own reflections."
12
"You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it."
12
"If its a lie,Then let me live,Between the interconnected fabric of truths,Offer me no more,Give me no less."
12
"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."
12
"I would not say that I was, these days, a 'student' of philosophy, although in my youth I was quite deeply involved with certain aspects of the British pragmatists."
12
"There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself."
11
"You are hurrying to the sweet place, To the nonsense chasing your spirit And in the nonsense you look for answers."
11
"Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck."
11
"Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day."
11
"Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don't see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence."
11
"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!"
11
"A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world."
11
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