Quotes by Philosophers - Page 120

The more thoroughly a person understands life, the less he will mock, though in the end he might still mock the "thoroughness of his understanding.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.
Alain de Botton
Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it - except in the case of the very purest and they are rare.
Simone Weil
Disciplining a child is easier than disciplining a grown person, and forgiving a child’s insolence is easier than forgiving a grown person's impudence.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The older Puritans had trampled down all fleshly impulses; these newer Puritans trampled no less self-righteously upon the spiritual cravings. But in the increasingly spiritistic inclination of physics itself, Behaviorism and Fundamentalism had found a meeting place. Since the ultimate stuff of the physical universe was now said to be multitudinous and arbitrary “quanta” of the activity “spirits”, how easy was it for the materialistic and the spiritistic to agree? At heart, indeed, they were never very far apart in mood, though opposed in doctrine. The real cleavage was between the truly spiritual view on the one hand, and the spiritistic and materialistic on the other. Thus the most materialistic of Christian sects and the most doctrinaire of scientific sects were not long in finding a formula to express their unity, their denial of all those finer capacities which had emerged to be the spirit of man.
Olaf Stapledon
Love came, it saw, and it conquered me.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Desire wills its perpetuation ad infinitum.
Susan Sontag
We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.
G.K. Chesterton
Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In community we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we want them to be.
Jean Vanier
Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically.
Plato
What clouds may wet the gaze without hope of emptiness within us?
Sorin Cerin
You are so lost to your higher self that you would resent me for my achievements, rather than celebrate them with me, sexually?
Ayn Rand
I suppose that I have not many months to live: but of course I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
Henry David Thoreau
So the unwanting soulsees what's hidden,and the ever-wanting soulsees only what it wants.
Lao Tzu
Other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The world is my country all mankind are my brethren and to do good is my religion.
Thomas Paine
Before you look for dirt in people, look for treasure.
Matshona Dhliwayo
We do not know what it's like to be a bat, we do not know what it's like to be in coma. we can't even say that we know what it's like to be sleeping. We can say what it's like to be restored to consciousness after sleeping. If there are no dreams during our sleep then the sleeping life is an empty life. We might say of such a life that it's not like being anything. We protect that life on the assumption that come the morning its normal functions will be restored. Suppose it was the case however that such functions were only restored every two days... every eight days... twice a year but only briefly. I assume the point is clear. Actions that end life are irretrievable. If we are mistaken at that point there is no going back.
Daniel N. Robinson
If you want my advice, Peter,” he said at last, “you’ve made a mistake already. By asking me. By asking anyone. Never ask people. Not about your work. Don’t you know what you want? How can you stand it, not to know?
Ayn Rand
A thing can only live through a pious illusion.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I am not a supporter of burning books; but like poison, some books should be kept away from simple minds who can't take in the strong content they provide
Bangambiki Habyarimana
If it is true that we cannot possess knowledge of what is good in any absolute sense, it is equally true that we have an ethical duty to decide between what is better and what is worse.
Richard Kearney
You can never have for yourself someone who isn't on good terms with himself.
Pascal Mercier
The genuine object of debate raised by the [2008 financial] crisis ought to be how to overcome the short-termism to which we have been led by a consumerism intrinsically destructive of all genuine investment in the future, a short-termism which has systematically, and not accidentally, been translated into decomposition of investment into speculation.
Bernard Stiegler
One should use common words to say uncommon things
Arthur Schopenhauer
To be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge must always be right. Yet wherever pride has any share in the work, even knowledge and light may be ill pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good: yet man perished in seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and if we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery as is needful to us, we shall perish in like manner.
John Ruskin
God tests, but he does not tempt.
Criss Jami
The fact is that we don't want to be free. What is responsible for our problems is the fear of losing what we have and what we know.
U.G. Krishnamurti
The only truths worth arguing about are those truths that could prevent or lead to circumstances that may bite us in the rear sooner or later.
Criss Jami
Secular ideologies preach liberty but practice tyranny.
Nancy Pearcey
When you're in the zone of your purpose with passion...time stands still.
T.F. Hodge
Every past is worth condemning.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is easier to lose a thosuand disciples than to win over one.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The hidden hand of contentment is in the rewards of the gratified. The hidden hand of bliss is in the rewards of the tranquil. The hidden hand of happiness is in the rewards of the elated. The hidden hand of joy is in the rewards of the jubilant.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke - Aye! and what then?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
You're my Star, a stargazer too,and I wish that I were Heaven,with a billion eyes to look at you!
Plato
If your dreams are priceless, they are worth more than your pain.
Matshona Dhliwayo
I'd lost all faith in everything, except for the certainty that there's always someone behind our backs waiting to deceive us.
Umberto Eco
The problem with studying is that it gets in the way of education.
Neel Burton
-make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being...
Aldous Huxley
All beings are made up of LifeParticles, and ceaselessly interact and communicate on this deeper level of reality. Through this connection, all beings affect and reflect each other. Whatever we do, we do to ourselves. Whatever comes out of us comes back.
Ilchi Lee
I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers.
Emil M. Cioran
The voice of the majority is no proof of justice
Friedrich Schiller
You can do what you will: but at each given moment of your life you can will only one determined thing and by no means anything other than this one.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Reading should serve the goal of attaining peace; if it doesn’t make you peaceful, what good is it?
Epictetus
The boring thing about being interesting is that you bore boring people.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.
Blaise Pascal
Compassion without discipline is egregious self-sabotage.
Stefan Molyneux
To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.
Susan Sontag
You are as the sun; the world is your stage; even without an audience, shine.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Life has ceased to be lived in a closed world the center of which was man; the world has become limitless and the same time threatening. By losing his fixed place in a closed world man loses the answer to the meaning of his life; the result is that doubt has befallen him concerning himself and the aim of life. He is threatened by powerful superpersonal forces, capital and the market. His relationship to his fellow men, with everyone a potential competitor, has become hostile and estranged; he is free - that is, he is alone, isolated, threatened from all sides. [H]e is overwhelmed with a sense of his individual nothingness and helplessness. Paradise is lost for good, the individual stands alone and faces the world - a stranger thrown into a limitless and threatening world. The new freedom is bound to create a deep feeling of insecurity, powerlessness, doubt, aloneness, and anxiety.
Erich Fromm
Expensive clothing is a poor man’s attempt to appear prosperous.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding; in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the cross.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Should a traveler, returning from a far country, bring us an account of men wholly different from any with whom we were ever acquainted, men who were entirely divested of avarice, ambition, or revenge, who knew no pleasure but friendship, generosity, and public spirit, we should immediately, from these circumstances, detect the falsehood and prove him a liar with the same certainty as if he had stuffed his narration with stories of centaurs and dragons, miracles and prodigies.
David Hume
The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord.
Zhuangzi
Love means to commit oneself without guarantee to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
Erich Fromm
Capitalist production...was necessary to develop the productive forces of society to a level which will make possible an equal development worthy of human beings for all members of society. All earlier forms of society were too poor for this.
Friedrich Engels
But neither will anyone ask us whether we will it or do not will it when the spiritual strength of the West fails and the West starts to come apart at the seams, when this moribund pseudocivilization collapses into itself, pulling all forces into confusion and allowing them to suffocate in madness.Whether such a thing occurs or does not occur, this depends solely on whether we as a historical-spiritual Volk will ourselves, still and again, or whether we will ourselves no longer. Each individual has a part in deciding this, even if, and precisely if, he seeks to evade this decision.But it is our will that our Volk fulfill its historical mission.
Martin Heidegger
Christ died not so that you could freely go on sinning, and therefore, continue dying; He died rather so that you could freely grow in obedience, and therefore, start living.
Criss Jami
Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.
Alain de Botton