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Quotes by Philosopher
"Perhaps it was a passing moment of madness after all. There is no trace of it any more. My odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them."
38
"Love one another, but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music."
38
"The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself."
38
"Only he who knows how to speak can be silent."
38
"The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one."
38
"I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits."
38
"Ideally a book would have no order in it, and the reader would have to discover his own."
38
"We like to admit to only that which already glows, although it is nobler to support brightness before it glows, not afterwards."
38
"Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off."
38
"Don't hope you will receive help from the words of life because they all bring you to death."
38
"William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt' ... what is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite."
38
"Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it."
38
"A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous."
38
"There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words."
38
"About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy."
38
"Bravery without forethought, causes a man to fight blindly and desperately like a mad bull. Such an opponent, must not be encountered with brute force, but may be lured into an ambush and slain."
38
"Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do."
38
"Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt."
38
"See what no one else can see. Be what no one else can be. Do what no one else can do."
38
"It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous."
38
"Even when I was studying mathematics, physics, and computer science, it always seemed that the problem of consciousness was about the most interesting problem out there for science to come to grips with."
38
"Would it not therefore be wiser in moral concerns to acquiesce in the judgement of common reason, or at most only to call in philosophy for the purpose of rendering the system of morals more complete and intelligible, and its rules more convenient for use (especially for disputation), but not so as to draw off the common understanding from its happy simplicity, or to bring it by means of philosophy into a new path of inquiry and instruction?"
38
"Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite."
38
"For our radically misnamed "materialistic civilization must above all cultivate the love of material, of earth, air, and water, of mountains and forests, of excellent food and imaginative housing and clothing, and of cherishing our artfully erotic contacts between human bodies. Certainly, all these so"called "things are as impermanent as ripples in water, but what life, what love, what energy is there in a perfectly pure abstraction or a totally solid and eternally indestructible rock?"
38
"I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will."
38
"I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature."
38
"He who seeks ecstasy in love should not complain of suffering."
38
"Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices."
38
"There is no respect for others without humility in one's self."
38
"Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person that they will not betray to stay alive."
38
"Enmity dies when friendship is born."
38
"There is nothing so bitter that a patient mind cannot find some solace for it."
38
"Genius is nothing but continued attention."
38
"Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them."
38
"Because we want to be inwardly secure, we are constantly seeking methods and means for this security, and thereby we create authority, the worship of another, which destroys comprehension, that spontaneous tranquility of mind in which alone there can be a state of creativeness."
38
"It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law."
38
"Healthy introspection, without undermining oneself; it is a rare gift to venture into the unexplored depths of the self, without delusions or fictions, but with an uncorrupted gaze."
38
"Being satisfied with the little we have; academically, spiritually, financially, ecumenically or otherwise will prevent a lot of problems from coming to us, and our dependence in our abilities and talents will go as far as bringing us satisfaction in life."
38
"The passion of hatred is so long lived and so obstinate a malady that the surest sign of death in a sick person is their desire for reconciliation."
38
"All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses."
38
"A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue."
38
"If you are doing whatever a shepherd is ordering you to do, then you are a real sheep, a poor submissive being!"
38
"If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature's way."
38
"There are those who speak and those who dream."
38
"The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one."
38
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