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Quotes by Philosopher
"I confused things with their names: that is belief."
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"We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible."
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"Envy of other people shows how they are unhappy. Their continual attention to others behavior shows how they are boring."
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"We receive the truths of science by compulsion. Nothing but ignorance is able to resist them."
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"Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism."
21
"O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him."
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"To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."
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"Stars are only the rain of the Absolute."
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"It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are."
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"In order to observe the movement of your own mind and heart, of your whole being, you must have a free mind, not a mind that agrees and disagrees, taking sides in an argument, disputing over mere words, but rather following with an intention to understand - a very difficult thing to do because most of us don't know how to look at, or listen to, our own being any more than we know how to look at the beauty of a river or listen to the breeze among the trees."
21
"I realize then that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing this value, yet the fact remains that I have no sympathy for the current European civilization and do not understand its goals, if it has any. So I am really writing for friends who are scattered throughout the corners of the globe."
21
"Is it honest for me to go and sit there on communion day and drink the wine and eat the bread while feeling it all to be mummery?"
21
"Are your principles not engraved in all hearts, and in order to learn your laws is it not enough to go back into oneself and listen to the voice of one's conscience in the silence of the passions? There you have true philosophy. Let us learn to be satisfied with that, and without envying the glory of those famous men who are immortalized in the republic of letters, let us try to set between them and us that glorious distinction which people made long ago between two great peoples: one knew how to speak well; the other how to act well."
21
"Complete and total perfection will come about only when we feel that our perfection is no perfections as long as the rest of humanity remains imperfect."
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"One hand I extend into myself, the other toward others."
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"All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one's condition, and is thus suffering as long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting; instead, it is only the beginning of a new striving. We see striving everywhere inhibited in many ways, struggling everywhere; and thus always suffering; there is no final goal of striving, and therefore no bounds or end to suffering."
21
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
21
"Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms."
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"Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own."
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"Do not look too far for you will see nothing."
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"The principle on which to manage an army is to set up one standard of courage which all must reach."
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"Originality exists in every individual because each of us differs from the others. We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves."
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"Burning the witch Giordano Bruno is one more wound inflicted on Christ's body."
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"Far from wishing to awaken the artist in the pupil prematurely, the teacher considers it his first task to make him a skilled artisan with sovereign control of his craft."
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"There's nothing more contagious than the laughter of young children, it doesn't even have to matter what they're laughing about."
21
"Overcoming what frightens you the most strengthens you the most."
21
"Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do-back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning."
21
"If we could establish a deep abiding relationship with nature, we would never kill an animal for our appetite; we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies."
21
"Anarchy is law and freedom without force.Despotism is law and force without freedom.Barbarism force without freedom and law.Republicanism is force with freedom and law."
21
"In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics."
21
"My house says to me, "Do not leave me, for here dwells your past."And the road says to me, "Come and follow me, for I am your future."And I say to both my house and the road, "I have no past, nor have I a future. If I stay here, there is a going in my staying; and if I go there is a staying in my going. Only love and death will change all things."
21
"Music is more powerful than reason in the soul. That is also why Plato made music the very first step in his long educational curriculum: good music was to create the harmony of soul that would be a ripe field for the higher harmony of reason to take root in later. And that is also why he said that the decay of the ideal state would begin with a decay in music. In fact, one of your obscure modern scholars has shown that social and political revolutions have usually been preceded by musical revolutions, and why another sage said, 'Let me write the songs of a nation and I care not who writes its laws."
21
"The firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue."
21
"Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth."
21
"He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon."
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"A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty."
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"A floating leaf has more to boast about than a sinking ship."
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"Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him."
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"What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', i.e. to escape boredom."
21
"Alas, where in the world have there been greater follies than with the compassionate?And what in the world has caused more suffering than the follies of the compassionate?Woe to all lovers who cannot surmount pity!Thus spoke the Devil to me once: Even God has his Hell: it is his love for man.And I lately heard him say these words: God is dead; God has died of his pity for man."
21
"Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living."
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