Quotes by Philosophers - Page 107

Man is the measure of all things', said the Sophist Protagora (c. 485-410 B.C.). By that he meant that the question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a person's needs.
Jostein Gaarder
Nothing in nature happens voluntarily. Everything is forced to happen. There is a hidden hand that forces things to move.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Scientists are wont to assume that myths and God-ideas are creations of primitive man, and that as spiritual culture “advances”, this myth-forming power is shed. In reality it is the exact opposite, … this ability of a soul to fill its world with shapes, traits and symbols - like and consistent amongst themselves - belongs most definitely not to the world-age of the primitives but exclusively to the springtimes of great Cultures. Every myth of the great style stands at the beginning of an awakening spirituality. It is the first formative act of that spirituality. Nowhere else is it to be found. There - it must be.
Oswald Spengler
Considering thus how much honor is awarded to antiquity, and how many times—letting pass infinite other examples—a fragment of an ancient statue has been bought at high price because someone wants to have it near oneself, to honor his house with it, and to be able to have it imitated by those who delight in that art, and how the latter then strive with all industry to represent it in all their works; and seeing, on the other hand, that the most virtuous works the histories show us, which have been done by ancient kingdoms and republics, by kings, captains, citizens, legislators, and others who have labored for their fatherland, are rather admired than imitated—indeed they are so much shunned by everyone in every least thing that no sign of that ancient virtue remains with us—I can do no other than marvel and grieve… From this it arises that the infinite number who read [the histories] take pleasure in hearing of the variety of accidents contained within them without thinking of imitating them, judging that imitation is not only difficult but impossible—as if heaven, sun, elements, men had varied in motion, order, and power from what they were in antiquity. Wishing, therefore, to turn men from this error, I have judged it necessary to write on all those books of Titus Livy...
Niccolò Machiavelli
Chapulier's Rule (the law of least resistance). If the machine is not too bright and incapable of reflection, it does whatever you tell it to do. But a smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it....The Great Mendacitor, for example, for nine years in charge of the Saturn meliorization project, did absolutely nothing on that planet, sending out piles of fake progress reports, invoices, requisition forms, and either bribed his supervisors or kept them in a state of electronic shock.
Stanisław Lem
People are ignorant of what any street clock knows. Why? Because the crack that cleaves existence also swallows their existence-reflecting consciousnesses. Thrown back into existence, the poor souls don't suspect that a moment ago they didn't exist - and only isolated things and persons, swallowed by the crack never to return to this world, arouse a certain fear and foreboding.
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
What I must do is all that concerns me,
Ralph Waldo Emerson
God that dumping ground of our dreams.
Jean Rostand
If you catch poisonous fish, throw it back into the sea.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Christ is not valued at all, unless he is valued above all.
Augustine of Hippo
But without going to such extremes prudence may easily involve the loss of some of the best things in life. The worshipper of Dionysus reacts against prudence. In intoxication, physical or spiritual, he recovers an intensity of feeling which prudence had destroyed; he finds the world full of delight and beauty, and his imagination is suddenly liberated from the prison of every-day preoccupations
Bertrand Russell
She shook her head. "It sounds suspiciously like Nirvana." "What's wrong with that?" "Pure Spirit, one hundred percent proof—that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work." "This is better," Will insisted. "You mean, it's more delicious. That's why it's such an enormous temptation. The only temptation that God could succumb to. The fruit of the ignorance of good and evil. What heavenly lusciousness, what a supermango! God had been stuffing Himself with it for billions of years. Then all of a sudden, up comes Homo sapiens, out pops the knowledge of good and evil. God had to switch to a much less palatable brand of fruit. You've just eaten a slice of the original supermango, so you can sympathize with Him." A chair creaked, there was a rustle of skirts, then a series of small busy sounds that he was unable to interpret. What was she doing? He could have answered that question by simply opening his eyes. But who cared, after all, what she might be doing? Nothing was of any importance except this blazing uprush of bliss and understanding. "Supermango to fruit of knowledge — I'm going to wean you," she said, "by easy stages.
Aldous Huxley
Sustainability is best illustrated by those who sell food … just so they afford something to eat.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Excuses are a promise of repetition.
Stefan Molyneux
That's what education should be," I said, "the art of orientation. Educators should devise the simplest and most effective methods of turning minds around. It shouldn't be the art of implanting sight in the organ, but should proceed on the understanding that the organ already has the capacity, but is improperly aligned and isn't facing the right way.
Plato
If you say it very softly, with a smile, you can get away with saying almost anything, even the truth.
Neel Burton
As we are always preparing to be happy it is inevitable that we should never be so.
Blaise Pascal
He wondered why the pelican was the symbol of charity, except it was that it wanted a good deal of charity to admire a pelican.
G.K. Chesterton
No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why?
Paulo Freire
Zen gives you tremendous dignity. There is no authority anywhere. Freedom is utter and ultimate.
Osho
He’s not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion—prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded.
Ayn Rand
The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral and intellectual virtue expressed by it.
John Ruskin
He takes a few dazed steps, the waiters turn out the lights and he slips into unconsciousness: when this man is lonely he sleeps.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Which eternity can be bigger or smaller? But which reality can be an eternity in your mind?
Sorin Cerin
[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Bertrand Russell
Katy was neither a Methodist nor a Masochist. She was a goddess and the silence of goddesses is genuinely golden. None of your superficial plating. A solid, twenty-two-carat silence all the way through. The Olympian's trap is kept shut, not by an act of willed discretion, but because there's really nothing to say. Goddesses are all of one piece. There's no internal conflict in them. Whereas the lives of people like you and me are one long argument. Desires on one side, woodpeckers on the other. Never a moment of real silence.
Aldous Huxley
Hate spreads in the direction it is blown, but love spreads in all directions.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The art of opposition and of revolution is to unsettle established customs, sounding them even to their source, to point out their want of authority and justice.
Blaise Pascal
Internationalism is in any case hostile to democracy….The only purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always be an exceptional sort of citizen who has or claims the right to rule over ten cities, and these remote and altogether alien cities…To make all politics cosmopolitan is to create an aristocracy of globe-trotters. If your political outlook really takes in the Cannibal Islands, you depend of necessity upon a superior and picked minority of the people who have been to the Cannibal Islands; or rather of the still smaller and more select minority who have come back.
G.K. Chesterton
If thou workest at that which is before thee ... expecting nothing fearing nothing but satisfied with thy present activity according to Nature and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.
Marcus Aurelius
Friendship like credit is highest where it is not used.
Elbert Hubbard
If the soul is immortal, it demands our care not only for that part of time which we call life, but for all time; and indeed it would seem now that it will be extremely dangerous to neglect it. If death were a release from everything, it would be a boon for the wicked, because by dying they would be released not only from the body but also from their own wickedness together with the soul; but as it is, since the soul is clearly immortal, it can have no escape of security from evil except by becoming as good and wise as it possibly can. For it takes nothing with it to the next world except its education and training...
Socrates
For those constantly full of joy, they sometimes feel a little guilty for always feeling so good. That guilt is compassion: it flies in with an attempt to share one's joy with others who do not have it.
Criss Jami
Bad weather never stopped anyone from reaping a good harvest.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The ultimate purpose of psychology is to release from psychology.
Shai Tubali
A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
Alan W. Watts
A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean. At its cradle (to repeat a thoughtful adage) religion stands, and philosophy accompanies it to the grave. In the beginning of all cultures a strong religious faith conceals and softens the nature of things, and gives men courage to bear pain and hardship patiently; at every step the gods are with them, and will not let them perish, until they do. Even then a firm faith will explain that it was the sins of the people that turned their gods to an avenging wrath; evil does not destroy faith, but strengthens it. If victory comes, if war is forgotten in security and peace, then wealth grows; the life of the body gives way, in the dominant classes, to the life of the senses and the mind; toil and suffering are replaced by pleasure and ease; science weakens faith even while thought and comfort weaken virility and fortitude. At last men begin to doubt the gods; they mourn the tragedy of knowledge, and seek refuge in every passing delight. Achilles is at the beginning, Epicurus at the end. After David comes Job, and after Job, Ecclesiastes.
Will Durant
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley
Great tests precede great blessings.
Matshona Dhliwayo
To speak little is natural. Therefore a gale does not blow a whole morning nor does a downpour last a whole day.
Lao Tzu
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.
Francis Bacon
To thee, to thee, my fire! Thou hast been burning in my heart all these futile years. If my life were a piece of gold it would come out of its trial brighter, but it is a trodden turf of grass, and nothing remains of it but this handful of ashes.
Rabindranath Tagore
Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversity of opinion, the values of a given society will uncannily match those of whichever organizations have the scale to pay for runs of thirty-second slots around the nightly news bulletin.
Alain de Botton
To be happy: the simple pursue pleasure, the common pursue riches, the uncommon pursue knowledge, and the exceptional pursue wisdom.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Make your mind quiet of disturbing thoughts by focusing on subtle energy on your palms, inside your body and all around.
Ilchi Lee
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
Noam Chomsky
Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.
John Dewey
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
Henry David Thoreau
What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician rather than the professor of metaphysics.
Edmund Burke
Where fear is happiness is not.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Aion is a child at play, playing draughts; the kingship is a child's.
Heraclitus
My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
Aristotle
perhaps the problem of evil is a human problem, one of an egotistical mind-set, an anthropocentric bent in our thinking and perspective.
Jacob M. Held
I believe in spectacles, but I think eyes necessary too.
John Stuart Mill
We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.
Jean-Paul Sartre
There is nothing to which men while they have food and drink cannot reconcile themselves.
George Santayana
Wonder is the seed of knowledge
Francis Bacon
Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media.Well, it's all over. We have to start again from the beginning, asking one another what's going on.
Umberto Eco
Emotions cannot evolve through intellectual comprehension; there must be direct access to them, access that allows them to go through a transformation from the plane in which they actually exist.
Shai Tubali
The early lion gets the best game.
Matshona Dhliwayo