Quotes by Philosophers - Page 151

Over the inter glaciers,I see the summer glow,And, through the wild-piled snowdrift,The warm rosebuds below.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don't constantly make angry your wife. Once she throws you out of her heart, there is no appeal
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Ultimate prosperity is one's value within. It takes a man of depth, morality, and charm to be envied yet without a sign of wealth or romance. A passion to prove such inner worth is his permission to achieve whatever he desires.
Criss Jami
On the 'Celestial Seasonings' green tea packet there is a short explanation of its benefits: 'Green tea is a natural source of antioxidants, which neutralize harmful molecules in the body known as free radicals. By taming free radicals, antioxidants help the body maintain its natural health.' Mutatis mutandis, is not the notion of totalitarianism one of the main ideological antioxidants, whose function throughout its career was to tame free radicals, and thus to help the social body to maintain its politico-ideological good health?
Slavoj Žižek
Even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The journey to greatness is a marathon, not a hundred meter dash.
Matshona Dhliwayo
I only seem negative to the fortunate. That's because I show the less fortunate that they aren't less fortunate after all.
Criss Jami
Every nation has the government that it deserves.
Joseph de Maistre
The goal of libertarianism is not to permit people to be free, but to make them realize that they don't need anyone's permission to be free.
Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
A coward is a man who'd rather live dead than die alive
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Bertrand Russell
The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or anomaly, but is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so-called “normal” functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way?
Jacques Derrida
Labels such as ‘‘the culture wars,’’ ‘‘the science wars,’’ or ‘‘the Freud wars’’ are now widely used to refer to some of the disagreements thatplague contemporary intellectual life ... But I would like to register a gentle protest. Metaphors influence the mind in many unnoticed ways. The willingness to describe fierce disagreement in terms of the metaphors of war makes the very existence of real wars seem more natural, more inevitable,more a part of the human condition. It also betrays us into an insensibility toward the very idea of war, so that we are less prone to be aware of how totally disgusting real wars really are.
Ian Hacking
They dispute not in order to find or even to seek Truth, but for victory, and to appear the more learned and strenuous upholders of a contrary opinion. Such persons should be avoided by all who have not a good breastplate of patience.
Giordano Bruno
If there is any societyamong robbers and murderers, they must at least. . . .abstainfrom robbing and murdering one another. So beneficenceis less essential than justice is to the existence of society; alack of beneficence will make a society uncomfortable, butthe prevalence of injustice will utterly destroy it.
Adam Smith
Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
Alain de Botton
The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.
Albert Camus
One has to take a somewhat bold and dangerous line with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we are bound to lose it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
By calling into question the very ideal of a universal, autonomous reason (which was, in the Enlightenment, the basis for rejecting religious thought) and further demonstrating that all knowledge is grounded in narrative or myth, Lyotard relativizes (secular) philosophy's claim to autonomy and so grants the legitimacy of a philosophy that grounds itself in Christian faith. Previously such a distinctly Christian philosophy would have been exiled from the 'pure' arena of philosophy because of its 'infection' with bias and prejudice. Lyotard's critique, however, demonstrates that no philosophy - indeed, no knowledge - is untainted by prejudice or faith commitments. In this way the playing field is leveled, and new opportunities to voice a Christian philosophy are created. Thus Lyotard's postmodern critique of metanarratives, rather than being a formidable foe of Christian faith and thought, can in fact be enlisted as an ally in the construction of a Christian philosophy.
James K.A. Smith
One cannot read a novel without ascribing to the heroine the traits of the one we love.
Alain de Botton
Profiting from opportunities is success. Profiting from adversity is greatness.
Matshona Dhliwayo
A Christian community should do as Jesus did: propose and not impose. Its attraction must lie in the radiance cast by the love of brothers.
Jean Vanier
No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it he must serve it too.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In humans (and humans alone), sexuality is embodied in desire--in the primordial desire for life-as-relation. That the sex drive serves the vital desire for relation--that on the level of the primordial process, the desire for life-in-itself clothes itself in the sex drive--belongs to the particularity of being human.
Christos Yannaras
...[S]ome of the opinions which people entertain should be respected, and others should not.
Socrates
The precept "Know yourself " was not solely intended to obviate the pride of mankind but likewise that we might understand our own worth.
Cicero
Our prayers should be for blessings in general for God knows best what is good for us.
Socrates
We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent "here and now " without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.
José Ortega y Gasset
I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal
The better the wife,the happier the man.The happier the man,the happier the wife.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Every exceptional bias against Christianity I find to be evidence for its validity.
Criss Jami
It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called Man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life’s thorns
Marquis de Sade
...no one should marvel at the ease with which Alexander [the Great] kept possession of Asia, or at the difficulties which others, like Pyrrhus and many more, had in preserving their conquests. The difference does not arise from the greater or lesser ability of the conqueror, but from dissimilarities in the conquered lands.
Niccolò Machiavelli
You, whom I have always loved and never found, you whom I expected to see at the end of the rails beyond the horizon—
Ayn Rand
He who does not reflect his life back to God in gratitude does not know himself.
Albert Schweitzer
With humanity, life has ended up with a living creature that never quite finds itself in the right place, a living creature destined to wander and endlessly make mistakes.
Michel Foucault
To know that we know what we know and that we do not know what we do not know that is true knowledge.
Henry David Thoreau
You are not in any way aware that you are already victorious, that life has happened to you. You are already a winner and nothing more is possible, all that could happen has happened to you. You are already an emperor, and there is no other kingdom to be won. But you have not recognized it, you have not known the beauty of the life that has already happened to you. You have not known the silence, the peace, the bliss that is already there.And because you are not aware of the inner kingdom, you always feel that something more is needed, some victory, to prove that you are not a beggar.
Osho
When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual.
Criss Jami
When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Even when walking in the company of two other men, I am bound to be able to learn from them. The good points of the one I copy, the bad points of the other I correct in myself.
Confucius
Meditation is one of the most serious things; you do it all day, in the office, with the family, when you say to somebody "I love you", when you are considering your children, when you educate them to become soldiers, to kill, to be nationalized, worshipping the flag, educating them to enter into this trap of the modern world; watching all that, realizing your part in it, all that is part of meditation. And when you so meditate you will find in it an extraordinary beauty; you will act rightly at every moment; and if you do not act rightly at a given moment it does not matter, you will pick it up again - you will not waste time in regret. Meditation is part of life, not something different from life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Routine is the god of every social system it is the seventh heaven of business the essential component in the success of every factory the ideal of every statesman.
Alfred North Whitehead
A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The popular element "feels" but does not always know or understand; the intellectual element "knows" but does not always understand and in particular does not always feel.
Antonio Gramsci
The world has enough light from the sun, but not from your mind; and the universe has enough light from the stars, but not from your soul.
Matshona Dhliwayo
You become greater than what you conquer within.
Matshona Dhliwayo
I have found that the morning is far more accessible when a good book awaits you.
Chris Matakas
If you consulted your business experiences instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter.
G.K. Chesterton
One can feel obliged to look at phototgraphs that record great cruelties and crimes. One should feel obliged to think about what it means to look at them, about the capacity actually to assimilate what they show. Not all reactions to these pictures are under the supervision of reason and conscience.
Susan Sontag
To know yourself you must know the transience of your self.
Ilyas Kassam
Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If our civilization goes on like this, only one man will laugh, because he can laugh better than the rest.
G.K. Chesterton
Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment and learn again to exercise ... his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.
Albert Schweitzer
A prince need take little account of conspiracies if the people are disposed in his favor.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Contrary to popular definitions, true tolerance means 'putting up with error' - not 'accepting all views'. We don't tolerate what we enjoy or endorse - say, chocolate, or roses, or Mozart's music. By definition, we tolerate what we don't approve of or what we believe to be false.
Paul Copan
I never saw Death before, and now I seeThat it is warring eyes in a woman's form.
Thiruvalluvar
The revolution is for the sake of life, not death.
Herbert Marcuse
It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they do not hide under the table, they eat only one sweet at a time, but later on, they make Society pay dearly for it!
Jean-Paul Sartre