Quotes by Philosophers - Page 106

Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from severalpieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to myown governing method, ignorance.
Michel de Montaigne
As old lies are laid to rest, new ones sprout from their ashes, as deadly as their ancestors
Bangambiki Habyarimana
No woman in maternity confinement can have stranger and more impatient wishes than I have.
Søren Kierkegaard
Big dreamers achieve more than big doubters.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The Ideal age for marriage in men is 35. The Ideal age for marriage in women is 18
Aristotle
I think maybe the classic formulation was by David Hume in "Of the First Principles of Government," where he pointed out that "Force is always on the side of the governed." Whether it's a military society, a partially free society, or what we - not he - would call a totalitarian state, it's the governed who have the power. And the rulers have to find ways to keep them from using their power. Force has its limits, so they have to use persuasion. They have to somehow find ways to convince people to accept authority. If they aren't able to do that, the whole thing is going to collapse.
Noam Chomsky
One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
Alain de Botton
In his numerous works, especially in The Idealist View of Life and Eastern Religions and Western Thought, the great Eastern Philosopher, Professor Radhakrishnan, advocates the necessity for the revival of the deeply spiritual mystical experience which is the basis of all religions and which is expressed in a pure form in Hinduism. He says: “In spite of all appearances to the contrary, we discern in the present unrest the gradual dawning of a great light, a converging life-endeavour, a growing realisation that there is a secret spirit in which we are all one, and of which humanity is the highest vehicle on earth, and an increasing desire to live out this knowledge and establish a kingdom of spirit on earth.” (Eastern Religions and Western Thought, p. 33). “The different religions have now come together, and if they are not to continue in a state of conflict or competition, they must develop a spirit of comprehension which will break down prejudice and misunderstanding and bind them together as varied expressions of a single truth. Such a spirit characterised the development of Hinduism, which has not been interrupted for nearly fifty centuries.
Tirupattur Ramaseshayyer Venkatachala Murti
These virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions ... The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life.
Aristotle
Blossoms shower, and then they go on showering—they never stop. The blossoms that showered for Buddha are still showering. The blossoms that showered for Subhuti are still showering.
Osho
If there is righteousness in the heart, there will be beauty in the character.If there is beauty in the character, there will be harmony in the home.If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nations.When there is order in the nations, there will peace in the world.
Confucius
American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.
Marshall McLuhan
One friend in a storm is worth more than a thousand friends in sunshine.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The UN lacked the ability to act without the support of its more powerful members, notably the United States. The American government wanted to avoid a repetition of its unsuccessful intervention in Somalia, in which thirty American troops were killed. President Clinton issued a directive on UN military conditions. The operations would also have to be directly relevant to American interests. These conditions excluded American support for UN intervention to stop the genocide [in Rwanda].
Jonathan Glover
The sky’s dangers offer the eagle more opportunities than the nest’s comfort.
Matshona Dhliwayo
88% of women love making their first love making incident with a man seem like an accident.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The black conservatives claim that the decline of values such as patience, deferred gratification, and self-reliance have resulted in the high crime rates, the increasing number of unwed mothers, and the relatively uncompetitive academic performances of black youth. And certainly these sad realities must be candidly confronted. But nowhere in their writings do the new black conservatives examine the pervasiveness of sexual and military images used by the mass media and deployed by the advertising industry in order to entice and titillate consumers. Black conservatives thus overlook the degree to which market forces of advanced capitalist processes thrive on sexual and military images.
Cornel West
We should lay up in peace what we shall need in war.
Syrus
I would say, if you like, that the party is like an out-moded mathematics...that is to say, the mathematics of Euclid. We need to invent a non-Euclidian mathematics with respect to political discipline.
Alain Badiou
In Rome you long for the country. In the country you praise to the skies the distant town.
Horace
Dreams, just dreams, it's all illusion
Bangambiki Habyarimana
The end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest.
Augustine of Hippo
Your deepest scars tell the world of your greatest triumphs.
Matshona Dhliwayo
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.
Henry David Thoreau
To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.
Peter Singer
The reality is that in many countries torture of the most revolting cruelty happens routinely, often under the auspices of governments with good relations with Europe and the United States, sometimes using equipment knowingly supplied by Western companies. There is little reason to think torture is in retreat. The festival of cruelty is in full swing.
Jonathan Glover
We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty.
G.K. Chesterton
So what oppresses and scares us? It is our own thoughts, obviously, What overwhelms people when they are about to leaves friends, family, old haunts and their accustomed way of life? Thoughts.
Epictetus
Music heals all forms of misery
Friedrich Nietzsche
What is left when honor is lost?
Publilius Syrus
The most successful are not the most perfect, but the imperfect who dare to believe that they can despite the damning verdict.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
The seeker after stillness should be told that the stillness is always there. Indeed it is in every man. But he has to learn, first, to let it in and, second, how to do so. The first beginning of this is to remember. The second is to recognize the inward pull. For the rest, the stillness itself will guide and lead him to itself.
Paul Brunton
Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.
Emil M. Cioran
Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Confidence is like a dragon where, for every head cut off, two more heads grow back.
Criss Jami
You cannot control the ocean, but you can guide the rivers that feed it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives... I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party . . . There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power."John Stuart Mill ( British philosopher, economist, and liberal member of Parliament for Westminster from 1865 to 68 )
John Stuart Mill
Knock on the heart’s emotions and its gates will be widely opened, but nock on reason and doubt will come charging at you
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Courage to be is the key to revelatory power of the feminist revolution.
Mary Daly
For I am aware what ability is requisite to persuade the proud how great is the virtue of humility, which raises us, not by a quite human arrogance, but by a divine grace, above all earthly dignities that totter on this shifting scene.
Augustine of Hippo
Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.
Jacob Needleman
Like most arts, the link between the mind and the pen can chain you like an enslaved workaholic. Even on an intended vacation you suddenly have this killer urge to record whatever the vacation may teach.
Criss Jami
Who can play without wanting to succeed even with a sentimentally gain?
Sorin Cerin
Why do you want to read anyway – for the sake of amusement or mere erudition? Those are poor, fatuous pretexts. Reading should serve the goal of attaining peace; if it doesn’t make you peaceful, what good is it?
Epictetus
If your soul mate comes with too much baggage, help her unpack it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Knowledge is air to the wise.Wisdom is poison to a fool.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Only through Beauty's morning-gate, dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge.
Friedrich Schiller
Travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy, and it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast countries still very imperfectly explored
Bertrand Russell
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours kindle it at home communicate it to others and it becomes the property of all.
Voltaire
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.", Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]
Susan Sontag
The bird and the elephant drink from the same river.
Matshona Dhliwayo
In the end the soul is itself the longing of the soulless for salvation.
Theodor W. Adorno
If you invite a snake into your home,do not be surprised if it bites you.
Matshona Dhliwayo
When what one does, reps, or 'spits', repetitively, is foul or beastly - one summons spiritual undertakers to dine on fleshly parasites. In various forms, nature's law purges all that becomes wasteful. Change your game, or the game will change you.
T.F. Hodge
The hen that lays the most eggs deserves the most food.
Matshona Dhliwayo
man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity
Paul Tillich
...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 laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists: (for who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.
John Locke
The common man prays, 'I want a cookie right now!' And God responds, 'If you'd listen to what I say, tomorrow it will bring you 100 cookies.
Criss Jami
All I know is I'm not a Marxist.
Karl Marx
The reward of the good man is to be allowed to worship in truth.
Søren Kierkegaard