Quotes by Philosophers - Page 197

Art is not religion, 'it doesn't even lead to religion.' But in the time of distress which is ours, the time when the gods are missing, the time of absence and exile, art is justified, for it is the intimacy of this distress: the effort to make manifest, through the image, the error of the imaginary, and eventually the ungraspable, forgotten truth which hides behind the error.
Maurice Blanchot
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
Alain de Botton
You can encounter the great life within you when you recover the zero point. When you encounter that great life, all limits created by the thoughts and emotions vanish and infinite creativity springs forth.
Ilchi Lee
To satisfy our doubts . . . it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency -- by something upon which our thinking has no effect. . . . Our external permanency would not be external, in our sense, if it was restricted in its influence to one individual. It must be something which affects, or might affect, every man. And, though these affections are necessarily as various as are individual conditions, yet the method must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every man shall be the same. Such is the method of science. Its fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are Real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those Reals affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really and truly are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and he reason enough about it, will be led to the one True conclusion. The new conception here involved is that of Reality.
Charles Sanders Peirce
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before,—a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
Henry David Thoreau
Baseless victimhood is usually the last stage before outright aggression.
Stefan Molyneux
Like the appearance of silver in mother of pearl, the world seems real until the Self, the underlying reality, is realized.
Adi Shankaracarya
The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony.
Heraclitus
Now to exert oneself and work for the sake of amusement seems silly and utterly childish. But to amuse oneself in order that one may exert oneself, as Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement is a sort of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it is taken for the sake of activity.
Aristotle
The debt we owe our parents can never be squared, and jolly good too, because doing so would threaten to nullify all relationship, all emotional commerce between the two generations. Being in debt, just like being in credit, means an active interest applies between the two parties and, once the debt is taken care of, the interest is bound to wane.
Robert Rowland Smith
Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.
Voltaire
Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, or is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.
Henry David Thoreau
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
Socrates
Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview.
Nancy Pearcey
The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.
Bruce Lee
For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.
Plato
Light poured out multiplies light poured in.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The rare opportunity to exist, no matter how brief, is worth the pain left in the wake of its disappearance.
Chris Matakas
To feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death.
Erich Fromm
You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary—it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two must save the world. Help me."Judas bowed his head. After a moment he asked, "If you had to betray your master, would you do it?"Jesus reflected for a long time. Finally he said, "No, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to. That is why God pitied me and gave me the easier task: to be crucified.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Don't poison a river whose fish you might need tomorrow.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Happiness is good, but well-overrated: what we hate most are the very motivators that put us in gear. A man drifts along with little to contribute until something agitates him enough to make a difference, whether for himself or for his communities.
Criss Jami
A belief is not true because it is useful
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer
Include and grow. Include and expand.
Osho
The universe, the whole mass of things that are, is corporeal, that is to say, body, and hath the dimensions of magnitude, length, breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is ‘body’ and that which is not ‘body’ is no part of the universe, and because the universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing, and consequently nowhere.
Thomas Hobbes
Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
Immanuel Kant
Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
Francis Bacon
Roses bloom whether you praise them or not.
Matshona Dhliwayo
What is discipline? Discipline means creating an order within you. As you are, you are a chaos.
Osho
Jiu Jitsu is the vehicle. Not the road.
Chris Matakas
There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future.
Simone de Beauvoir
If a lion invites you to dinner, turn down the offer, no matter how hungry you are.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The spirit of excellence exorcises the demon of mediocrity.
Matshona Dhliwayo
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Each of us is aware he's a material being, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and that the strength of all our emotions combined cannot counteract those laws. It can only hate them. The eternal belief of lovers and poets in the power of love which is more enduring that death, the finis vitae sed non amoris that has pursued us through the centuries is a lie. But this lie is not ridiculous, it's simply futile. To be a clock on the other hand, measuring the passage of time, one that is smashed and rebuilt over and again, one in whose mechanism despair and love are set in motion by the watchmaker along with the first movements of the cogs. To know one is a repeater of suffering felt ever more deeply as it becomes increasingly comical through a multiple repetitions. To replay human existence - fine. But to replay it in the way a drunk replays a corny tune pushing coins over and over into the jukebox?
Stanisław Lem
Anthropocentrism gave rise to boredom, and when anthropomorphism was replaced by technocentrism, boredom became even more profound.
Lars Fr. H. Svendsen
What may intimidate a man is a woman who thinks with her mind before she feels with her heart. Nevertheless what determines the strength in the man is his ability to accept one when he sees one.
Criss Jami
Boredom is certainly not an evil to be taken lightly: it will ultimately etch lines of true despair onto a face. It makes beings with as little love for each other as humans nonetheless seek each other with such intensity, and in this way becomes the source of sociability.
Arthur Schopenhauer
You can never plan the future by the past.
Edmund Burke
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.
Robert M. Pirsig
Bring the mind into sharp focus and make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere. The mind must be emancipated from old habits, prejudices, restrictive thought processes and even ordinary thought itself.
Bruce Lee
Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential.
Ayn Rand
No ideology can help to create a new worldor a new mind or a new human being --because ideological orientation itselfis the root cause of all the conflicts and all the miseries.Thought creates boundaries, thought creates divisions and thought creates prejudices; thought itself cannot bridge them. That's why all ideologies fail.Now man must learn to live without ideologiesreligious, political or otherwise. When the mind is not tethered to any ideology, it is free to move to new understandings. And in that freedom flowers all that is good and all that is beautiful.
Osho
In a materialistic society, an employed boy is older than an unemployed man.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
Socrates
A wise man will know what game to play to-day, and play it. We must not be governed by rigid rules, as by the almanac, but let the season rule us. The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's. Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. Where the good husbandman is, there is the good soil. Take any other course, and life will be a succession of regrets. Let us see vessels sailing prosperously before the wind, and not simply stranded barks. There is no world for the penitent and regretful.
Henry David Thoreau
It is now an easy matter to spell out the ethic of a truth: 'Do all that you can to persevere in that which exceeds you perseverance. Persevere in the interruption. Seize in your being that which has seized and broken you.
Alain Badiou
A philosophical thought is not supposed to be impervious to all criticism; this is the error Whitehead describes of turning philosophy into geometry, and it is useful primarily as a way of gaining short-term triumphs in personal arguments that no one else cares (or even knows) about anyway. A good philosophical thought will always be subject to criticisms (as Heidegger’s or Whitehead’s best insights all are) but they are of such elegance and depth that they change the terms of debate, and function as a sort of “obligatory passage point” (Latour’s term) in the discussions that follow.Or in other words, the reason Being and Time is still such a classic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of readers almost a century later, is not because Heidegger made “fewer mistakes” than others of his generation. Mistakes need to be cleaned up, but that is not the primary engine of personal or collective intellectual progress.
Graham Harman
God hides treasure in dirt, so that only those humble enough to dig through it find it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Conquer your customer as you would a woman
Bangambiki Habyarimana
For their never-ending endeavours to obtain or retain wealth, countries desperately need companies, because they—unlike most human beings—have the means of production, and human beings, because they—unlike all companies—have the means of reproduction.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Enmity dies when friendship is born.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The greatest effects we have on the world are the ones we can never see.
Chris Matakas
Humor can get in under the door while seriousness is still fumbling at the handle.
G.K. Chesterton
Renounce poor work.Shun trivial work.Entertain respectable work.Welcome superior work.Honor transcendent work.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Love, that moves the sun and the other stars
Dante Alighieri
For the believer, humility is honesty about one's greatest flaws to a degree in which he is fearless about truly appearing less righteous than another.
Criss Jami
The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?
Henry David Thoreau
Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory....everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.
Albert Camus