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Quotes by Philosopher
"Pride has quite a bit to do with hatred. In many a case in which one hates another, one subconsciously begins patterns of cherry-picking and selective hearing: he continues to look only for things about the other person which he can use to justify his hatred, things which will then make him feel less guilty about hating someone. In this regard, hatred is not so much an emotion as it is a decision."
38
"If a tree bears sweet fruit, birds have many reasons to visit it."
38
"I find the selectivity of erotic love - the choice of this man or this woman - much more intelligible if liking the person is the origin of sexual interest, rather than the other way."
38
"The great aim of education is not knowledge but action."
38
"Wisdom finds its literary expression in wisdom literature."
38
"When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion."
38
"There is no sharper spear than wisdom. There is no larger shield than faith. There is no better fortress than truth. There is no greater strength than hope. There is no higher power than love."
38
"It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end."
38
"...since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?"
38
"Love has no wings, but is an angel. Lust has no horns, but is a devil."
38
"Death would be an extremely bad thing like most of us paint it, if being dead were painful."
38
"Nurture a tree today, and it will provide you shade tomorrow."
38
"He, however, who begins with Metaphysics, will not only become confused in matters of religion, but will fall into complete infidelity."
38
"Interfere with the reality of my world, and you therefore take the very life and heart out of my will."
38
"Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few."
38
"When in fear it is safest to force the attack."
38
"An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature."
38
"When climbing, you don't have to put your foot on every step, jump over some of them! When solving your problems, you don't have to solve each and every one, jump over some of them!"
38
"In its famous paradox, the equation of money and excrement, psychoanalysis becomes the first science to state what common sense and the poets have long known - that the essence of money is in its absolute worthlessness."
38
"If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe."
38
"Assuming what people want is about as controlled as using fireworks to start a fire."
38
"Never to talk of oneself is a form of hypocrisy."
38
"Our reason arises, at the very least, from this twofold lesson of sensuous revelations and human testimonies."
38
"Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face. Or perhaps it is because I am a single man? People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?"
38
"Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy."
38
"Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly."
38
"Why do you consult [women's] words when it is not their mouths that speak? Consult their eyes, their colour, their breathing, their timid manner, their slight resistance, that is the language nature gave them for your answer. The lips always say 'No,' and rightly so; but the tone is not always the same, and that cannot lie. Has not a woman the same needs as a man, but without the same right to make them known? Her fate would be too cruel if she had no language in which to express her legitimate desires except the words which she dare not utter."
38
"Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches."
38
"In thus pointing out certain respects in which philosophy resembles literature more than science, I do not mean, of course, to imply that it would be well for philosophy if it ceased to aim at scientific rigor."
38
"Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost."
38
"Among the notable things about fire is that it also requires oxygen to burn - exactly like its enemy, life. Thereby are life and flames so often compared."
38
"There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved."
38
"Of this our true individual life, our present life is a glimpse, a fragment, a hint, and in its best moments a visible beginning."
38
"Tension means you want to be something else that you are not."
38
"Not everyone who condemns masturbation can masturbate."
38
"It is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views."
38
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom."
38
"We derive our vitality from our store of madness."
38
"A prisoner is imprisoned by the crime that he has committed. A jailer is imprisoned - in the very same prison - by the employment contract that he has signed."
38
"I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general."
38
"Time makes friendship stronger, but love weaker."
38
"Participation in the blessings of the union with Christ comes when the faithful have all the things needed to live well and blessedly to God."
38
"Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength."
38
"Now since shame is a mental picture of disgrace, in which we shrink from the disgrace itself and not from its consequences, and we only care what opinion is held of us because of the people who form that opinion, it follows that the people before whom we feel shame are those whose opinion of us matters to us."
38
"Work is the price which is paid for reputation."
38
"Turbulence does not shake a tree with strong roots."
38
"We often attribute 'understanding' and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions."
38
"Man is not logical and his intellectual history is a record of mental reserves and compromises. He hangs on to what he can in his old beliefs even when he is compelled to surrender their logical basis."
38
"The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly."
38
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