Quotes by Philosophers - Page 124

Rational conduct on the basis of the idea of calling, was born... from the spirit of Christian asceticism.
Max Weber
... The soul which is led by God and His wisdom, rather than by bodily concupiscence, will certainly never consent to the desire aroused in its own flesh by another's lust.
Augustine of Hippo
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. . . . The force of character is cumulative.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Capitalism puts things (capital) higher than life (labor). Power follows from possession, not from activity.
Erich Fromm
Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful contribution to mankind was the frivolous way in which it went about marketing its products. Grief was the only rational response to the news that an employee had spent three months devising a supermarket promotion based on an offer of free stickers of cartoon characters called the Fimbles. Why had the grown-ups so churlishly abdicated their responsibilities? Were there not more important ambitions to be met before Death showed himself on the horizon in his hooded black cloak, his scythe slung over his shoulder?
Alain de Botton
We must keep our thought secret, and judge everything by it, while talking like the people.
Blaise Pascal
Almost all genius up to now was one-sided—the result of a sickly constitution. One type had too much sense of the external, the other too much inner sense. Seldom could nature achieve a balance between the two—a complete constitution of genius. Often a perfect proportion arose by chance, but this could never endure because it was not comprehended and fixed by the spirit—they remained fortunate moments. The first genius that penetrated itself found here the exemplary germ of an immeasurable world. It made a discovery which must have been the most remarkable in the history of the world—for with it there begins a whole new epoch for humanity—and true history of all kinds becomes possible for the first time at this stage—for the way that had been traversed hitherto now makes up a proper whole that can be entirely elucidated. That point outside the world is given, and now Archimedes can fulfill his promise.
Novalis
I shall treat the nature and power of the Affects, and the power of the Mind over them, by the same Method by which, in the preceding parts, I treated God and the Mind, and I shall consider human actions and appetites just as if it were a Question of lines, planes, and bodies.
Baruch Spinoza
When you have mountains in the distance or even hills, you have space.
Robert M. Pirsig
Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining but they make them artificial.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We need an enemy to give people hope. Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards: those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and the bastards always talk about the purity of the race. National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same. Hatred has to be cultivated as a civic passion. The enemy is the friend of the people. You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the primordial passion. It is love that’s abnormal.
Umberto Eco
Solitude and reflection are necessary to give to wishes the force of passions.
Mary Wollstonecraft
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
Noam Chomsky
The Master said, “A true teacher is one who, keeping the past alive, is also able to understand the present.”(Analects 2.11)
Confucius
External beauty is certainly cool to admire, but when worshipped - it eclipses internal shine.
T.F. Hodge
God is in the world or nowhere creating continually in us and around us. Insofar as man partakes of this creative process does he partake of the divine of God and that participation is his immortality ....
Alfred North Whitehead
If a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever can contribute to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, the general practice of hospitality and charity amongst each other, and above all, a treatment of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilized people – then the Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe, and if civilization is to become an article of trade between England and India, I am convinced that England will gain by the import cargo.
Thomas Munro
Belief means not wanting to know what is true.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
Søren Kierkegaard
When the self is not engaged in apprehending objects it becomes aware of itself.
Walter Terence Stace
There are men and gods, and beings like Pythagoras.
Pythagoras
The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is incredible how many hurts can be healed by the two words, 'I'm sorry.
Matshona Dhliwayo
You have been blessed to stand on the shoulders of giants. Make sure that someone stands on yours as well. This is the only way of human progress.
Chris Matakas
If the sky had no tears, the world would have no rainbows.
Matshona Dhliwayo
And so the mind or spirit is the great opportunist, itself impossible to pin down, take hold of, anywhere; one is tempted to believe that of all its influence nothing is left but decay. Every advance is a gain in particular and a separation in general; it is an increase in power leading only to a progressive increase in impotence, but there is no way to quit.
Robert Musil
Light is formless, but pierces the eyes.Wisdom is formless, but pierces the mind.Faith is formless, but pierces the heart.Love is formless, but pierces the soul.
Matshona Dhliwayo
To seek fulfillment is to invite frustration.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The saddest of all tragedies - the wasted life
Aristotle
Read whatever book you lay your hands on if you can, for every writer has a story to tell
Bangambiki Habyarimana
When virtue has slept she will get up more refreshed.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.
Thomas Hobbes
We think in generalities but we live in detail.
Alfred North Whitehead
Truth... has no obligation to console you.
Osho
I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.
Immanuel Kant
The point of meditating is not to learn to sit quietly in a room. The point is to live that way in the world.
Chris Matakas
Real meditation means: don’t avoid the inner madhouse; enter into it, face it, encounter it, be watchful, because it is through watchfulness that you will overcome it.
Osho
Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the "leaf": the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted--but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model.
Friedrich Nietzsche
When we look for success, it should be for the sole purpose of boasting sincerely in Christ. There's no other reason for it. Success is only worth it when the more intense it gets for you, the more you find yourself bragging for his glory rather than your own.
Criss Jami
One common cause of this mistake of preferring to imagine and admire a great ideal instead of beginning to do little deeds is our impatience with little baby steps, our lack of humility.
Peter Kreeft
If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.
Marcus Aurelius
A cowardly warrior is like a toothless lion.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Jesus never expected us simply to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us, give unto them that ask, and so forth. These responses, generally and rightly understood to be characteristic of Christlikeness, were put forth by him as illustrative of what might be expected of a new kind of person – one who intelligently and steadfastly seeks, above all else, to live within the rule of God and be possessed by the kind of righteousness that God himself has, as Matthew 6:33 portrays. Instead, Jesus did invite people to follow him into that sort of life from which behavior such as loving one’s enemies will seem like the only sensible and happy thing to do. For a person living that life, the hard thing to do would be to hate the enemy, to turn the supplicant away, or to curse the curser… True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.
Dallas Willard
Naysayers are frightened of their own power.
T.F. Hodge
It is vain to ask of the gods what man is capable of supplying for himself.
Epicurus
A work of art has an author and yet when it is perfect it has something which is anonymous about it.
Simone Weil
The earliest bird gets the worm only if the worm is stupid enough to show up.
Matshona Dhliwayo
I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
Henry David Thoreau
I never was ruined but twice - once when I lost a lawsuit and once when I gained one.
Voltaire
The future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny thatthe effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen themby repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalentof destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Anticipationis imperative.
Hélène Cixous
I am not convinced within myself that to its core and as a whole, humanity has, as some like to assume, progressed a great deal over the millennia. Human technology? Of course. Human beings? Hardly.
Criss Jami
Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one.
Thomas Paine
That also which before was from the earth, passes back into the earth, and that which was sent from the borders of ether, is carried back and taken in again by the quarters of heaven. Death does not extinguish things in such a way as to destroy the bodies of matter, but only breaks up the union amongst them, and then joins anew the different elements with others; and thus it comes to pass that all things change their shapes and alter their colors and receive sensations and in a moment yield them up...
Titus Lucretius Carus
What is in great demand, but scarce, is expensive, but even when wisdom is not in demand it is priceless.
Matshona Dhliwayo
When you are at your lowest God is getting ready to take you to your highest.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The great law of culture: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
Thomas Carlyle
The darker it gets, the brighter your dreams shine.
Matshona Dhliwayo
People think that whatever comes out of the mouth of a wise man is the choicest gem, sometime it's utter stupidity and rubbish
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Don't be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.
G.K. Chesterton