Quotes by Philosophers - Page 245

Belief in form but disbelief in content - that's what makes an aphorism charming.

So now you must choose... Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so? To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable - bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder…

There’s nothing more insufferable than people who boast about their own humility

Think objectively.Think operationally.Think optimistically.Think outstandingly.

Love is a power which produces love.

I argue that even as the war is framed in certain ways to control and heighten affect in relation to the differential grievability of lives, so war has come to frame ways of thinking multiculturalism and debates on sexual freedom, issues largely considered separate from "foreign affairs.

Even the richest of brands are robbed by poor character.

This false appearance distinguishes wages labour from other historical forms of labour. On the basis of the wages system even the unpaid labour seems to be paid labour. With the slave, on the contrary, even that part of his labour which is paid appears to be unpaid. Of course, in order to work the slave must live, and one part of his working day goes to replace the value of his own maintenance. But since no bargain is struck between him and his master, and no acts of selling and buying are going on between the two parties, all his labour seems to be given away for nothing.

I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.

A sweet soul will take you further than a sweet tongue.

Propaganda is a sprinter, but truth is a long-distance runner.

P60- one does not liberate people by alienating them. P62- consciousness is the constant unveiling of reality.

The nineteenth century and our own have been rather the age of multiplication: a dispersion of sexualities, a strengthening of their disparate forms, a multiple implantation of "perversions." Our epoch has initiated sexual heterogeneities.

That's a rhetorical question, and trying to answer rhetorical questions instead of being cowed by them is a good habit to cultivate.

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn."Benjamin Franklin never said those words, he was falsely attributed on a respected quotation website and it spread from there. The quote comes from the Xunzi.Xun Kuang was a Chinese Confucian philosopher that lived from 312-230 BC. His works were collected into a set of 32 books called the Xunzi, by Liu Xiang in about 818 AD. There are woodblock copies of these books that are almost 1100 years old.Book 8 is titled Ruxiao ("The Teachings of the Ru"). The quotation in question comes from Chapter 11 of that book. In Chinese the quote is:不闻不若闻之, 闻之不若见之, 见之不若知之, 知之不若行之It is derived from this paragraph:Not having heard something is not as good as having heard it; having heard it is not as good as having seen it; having seen it is not as good as knowing it; knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice. (From the John Knoblock translation, which is viewable in Google Books)The first English translation of the Xunzi was done by H.H. Dubs, in 1928, one-hundred and thirty-eight years after Benjamin Franklin died.

Thunder is noise to a pessimist but music to an optimist.

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!

A good speech like a woman's skirt should be long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. I have been asked to give my address in the remaining five minutes. That I can do! Here it is: 10 Carlton Gardens London England.

My dear Scipio and Laelius. Men, of course, who have no resources in themselves for securing a good and happy life find every age burdensome. But those who look for all happiness from within can never think anything bad which Nature makes inevitable.

The material universe exists only in the mind.

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

Fear is an uneasiness of the mind upon the thought of a future evil likely to befall us.

today we read of Don Quixote with a bitter taste in the mouth, it isalmost an ordeal, which would make us seem very strange and incomprehensibleto the author and his contemporaries, – they read it with a clearconscience as the funniest of books, it made them nearly laugh themselvesto death).To see suffering does you good, to make suffer, better still – thatOn the Genealogy of Morality4248 See below, Supplementary material, pp. 153–4.49 See below, Supplementary material, pp. 137–9, pp. 140–1, pp. 143–4.50 Don Quixote, Book II, chs 31–7.is a hard proposition, but an ancient, powerful, human-all-too-humanproposition to which, by the way, even the apes might subscribe: as peoplesay, in thinking up bizarre cruelties they anticipate and, as it were, act outa ‘demonstration’ of what man will do. No cruelty, no feast: that is whatthe oldest and longest period in human history teaches us – and punishment,too, has such very strong festive aspects! –

You can't hide from wisdom, it's everywhere;you won't find it in everyone, it's too rare.

It is more Important to be of pure intention than of perfect action.

If our life has no meaning other than our own happiness, we are likely to find that when we have obtained what we think we need to be happy, happiness itself still eludes us.

Having lived with kings, I have become a king in my own home.

Even the soberest judged it requisite to sacrifice one part of their liberty to ensure the other, as a man, dangerously wounded in any of his limbs, readily parts with it to save the rest of his body.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

A virtue is a habit that includes all of these things: actions (you take care of your child even when you don't feel like it), emotions (you are often overtaken by feelings of tenderness and delight), perceptions (you understand your little children better than they understand themselves), choices (you choose to get out of bed and go to the children's room even when you'd much rather not), and thoughts (you think differently, more thoroughly and carefully, about your children than about anyone else in the world). The habit of love includes all these things, but not necessarily all at the same time.

In this passionately social world, loneliness dogged the spirit. People were constantly “getting together,” but they never really got there. Everyone was terrified of being alone with himself; yet in company, in spite of the universal assumption of comradeship, these strange beings remained as remote from one another as the stars. For everyone searched his neighbour’s eyes for the image of himself, and never saw anything else. Or if he did, he was outraged and terrified.

Seeds are proof that the greatest growth takes place in the dark.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

There is peace where mind and heart agree.

Humanity is when the society is able to care, protect and value one another.

True humility derives from a proper perspective of our human condition: one among billions on a small planet among billions, like a fungus on a tiny fragment of cheese. Of course, it is nearly impossible for human beings to remain this objective for very long, but truly humble people are nonetheless far more conscious of the insignificance of their true relations, an insignificance that verges on non-existence. A speck of dust does not think itself more superior or inferior than another, nor does it concern itself for what other specks of dust might or might not think. Enthralled by the miracle of existence, the truly humble person lives not for herself or her image, but for life itself, in a condition of pure peace and pleasure.

Humility raises us not by human arrogance but by divine grace.

Our thoughts shape how we behave.

If you follow the herd, people may mistake you for a cow.

But a map is not enough as a guide for action; we also need a goal that tells us where to go. Animals have no such problems. Their instincts provide them with a map as well as with goals. But lacking instinctive determination and having a brain that permits us to think of many directions in which we can go, we need an object of total devotion, a focal point for all our strivings and the basis for all our effective - not only our proclaimed - values. We need such an object of devotion in order to integrate our energies in one direction, to transcend our isolated existence, with all its doubts and insecurities, and to answer our need for a meaning of life.

The purported insight achieved by the patient is not the product of a process of veridical self-discovery, but rather reflects the patient’s conversion to the therapist’s interpretation.

Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: "In reality, who am I?" The defensive attitudes created by this violent bringing together of the colonised man and the colonial system form themselves into a structures which then reveals the colonised personality. This 'sensitivity' is easily understood if we simply study and are alive to the number and depth of the injuries inflicted upon a native during a single day spent amidst the colonial regime. It must in any case be remembered that a colonised people is not only simply a dominated people. Under the German occupation the French remained men; under the French occupation, the Germans remained men. In Algeria there is not simply the domination but the decision to the letter not to occupy anything more than the sum total of the land.

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.

I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me,and I have followed the source of rivers towards theirsource or plunged into forests, always making for othercities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; andI could never turn back any more than a record can spinin reverse. And all that was leading me where ?To this very moment...

Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.

We fail to take responsibility, to act productively in the interest of ourselves and others. And in our attempts at a better life, we are often severely limited or thwarted by the immature and socially inept behavior of ourselves and others. There is a great fabric of relations, behaviors and emotions, reverberating with human and animal bliss and suffering, a web of intimate and formal relations, both direct and indirect. Nasty whirlwinds of feedback cycles blow through this great multidimensional web, pulsating with hurt and degradation. My lacking human development blocks your possible human development. My lack of understanding of you, your needs perspectives, hurts you in a million subtle ways. I become a bad lover, a bad colleague, a bad fellow citizen and human being. We are interconnected: You cannot get away from my hurt and wounds. They will follow you all of your life—I will be your daughter’s abusive boyfriend, your belligerent neighbor from hell. And you will never grow wings because there will always be mean bosses, misunderstanding families and envious friends. And you will tell yourself that is how life must be. But it is not how life has to be. Once you begin to be able to see the social-psychological fabric of everyday life, it becomes increasingly apparent that the fabric is relatively easy to change, to develop. Metamodern politics aims to make everyone secure at the deepest psychological level, so that we can live authentically; a byproduct of which is a sense of meaning in life and lasting happiness; a byproduct of which is kindness and an increased ability to cooperate with others; a byproduct of which is deeper freedom and better concrete results in the lives of everyone; a byproduct of which is a society less likely to collapse into a heap of atrocities.

A day is a miniature eternity.

True mastery transcends any particular art. It stems from mastery of oneself--the ability, developed through self-discipline, to be calm, fully aware, and completely in tune with oneself and the surroundings. Then, and only then, can a person know himself.

To judge a man means nothing other than to ask: What content does he give to the form of humanity? What concept should we have of humanity if he were its only representative?

It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they (world religions) disagree, not more than one of them can be true.

The folly of one man is the fortune of another.

Sleeping is the most common attempt to temporarily escape reality.

...if pride, that plague of human nature, that source of so much misery, did not hinder it; for this vice does not measure happiness so much by its own conveniences, as by the misery of others; and would not be satisfied with being thought a goddess, if none were left that were miserable, over whom she might insult. Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter, by comparing it with the misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth they may feel their poverty the more sensibly.

It is better to be a marble in a hut than a brick in a palace.

Of real sensational journalism, as it exists in France, in Ireland, and in America, we have no trace in this country. When a journalist in Ireland wishes to create a thrill, he creates a thrill worth talking about. He denounces a leading Irish member for corruption, or he charges the whole police system with a wicked and definite conspiracy. When a French journalist desires a frisson there is a frisson; he discovers, let us say, that the President of the Republic has murdered three wives. Our yellow journalists invent quite as unscrupulously as this; their moral condition is, as regards careful veracity, about the same. But it is their mental calibre which happens to be such that they can only invent calm and even reassuring things. The fictitious version of the massacre of the envoys of Pekin was mendacious, but it was not interesting, except to those who had private reasons for terror or sorrow. It was not connected with any bold and suggestive view of the Chinese situation. It revealed only a vague idea that nothing could be impressive except a great deal of blood. Real sensationalism, of whichI happen to be very fond, may be either moral or immoral. But even when it is most immoral, it requires moral courage. For it is one of the most dangerous things on earth genuinely to surprise anybody. If you make any sentient creature jump, you render it by no means improbable that it will jump on you. But the leaders of this movement have no moral courage or immoral courage; their whole method consists in saying, with large and elaborate emphasis, the things which everybody else says casually, and without remembering what they have said. When they brace themselves up to attack anything, they never reach the point of attacking anything which is large and real, and would resound with the shock. They do not attack the army as men do in France, or the judges as men do in Ireland, or the democracy itself as men did in England a hundred years ago. They attack something like the War Office--something, that is, which everybody attacks and nobody bothers to defend, something which is an old joke in fourth-rate comic papers

The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.

Waste no time lamenting with regard to what is lacking. In such instances, immediately turn focus toward what is to be...and remain poised to receive that which is due.

The language of Energy-Consciousness, LifeParticles, can be universal for all life-forms. To enliven it ask yourself, “How would I feel if …” and just feel - how other people feel, how the oceans, forests, animals and the Earth feel. Through this language, you can deliver your feeling and intent to others and consciously experience your connection to all beings.

When coming to making kids: Size doesn’t count, it’s sperm count that counts.