Quotes by Philosophers - Page 287

Your inability to see the wisdom in someone else is not a reflection on their lack of perspicacity, it is a reflection on yours.
Ilyas Kassam
So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.
Voltaire
fear in sooth holds so in check all mortals, because they see many operations go on in earth and heaven, the causes of which they can in no way understand, believing them therefore to be done by power divine.
Titus Lucretius Carus
Reason is the presupposition of faith, and faith is the fulfillment of reason.
Paul Tillich
Money is human happiness in the abstract he then who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.
Arthur Schopenhauer
One needs to be either more brave or more good, because if courage is lacking goodness can substitute, while cowardice is the deficiency of both.
Neel Burton
Play with the emotions, play with the heart and the animal will surrender to yo
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Beautiful silence is better than ugly speech.
Matshona Dhliwayo
There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy.
Albert Camus
We are not troubled by things but by the opinion which we have of things.
Epictetus
Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but, however unwilling the partizans of the Christian system may be to believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.There was more knowledge in the world before that period, than for many centuries afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as already said, was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of theism.; and if we take our stand about the beginning of the sixteenth century, we look back through that long chasm, to the times of the Ancients, as over a vast sandy desert, in which not a shrub appears to intercept the vision to the fertile hills beyond.
Thomas Paine
The justice which would forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a single step taken in conscious evil.
Ayn Rand
Envy is a sign of insecurity, yes; but so is longing to be envied.
Criss Jami
Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal.
Elbert Hubbard
Keep calm and live
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration… tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils
Francis Bacon
Now, it so happens that our culture—or lack of it, for our culture is in a state of flux and crisis—places a high value on materialism, and, by extension, greed. Our culture’s emphasis on greed is such that people have become immune to satisfaction. Having acquired one thing, they are immediately ready to desire the next thing that might suggest itself. Today, the object of desire is no longer satisfaction, but desire itself.
Neel Burton
If you say one thing, and do something different, how can your conscience trust you? Self-trust comes from integrity.
Ilchi Lee
Give of yourself to others and others will give of themselves to you.
Matshona Dhliwayo
I think therefore I am.
René Descartes
Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults, a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
On the other side of self-doubt comes a confidence from faith in the process. Even though our destination may be a long way off, each day we rise with a subtle smile as if we have already achieved it, because, when we are truly committed to a task, we already have.
Chris Matakas
Institutional wisdom tells us that children need school. Institutional wisdom tells us that children learn in school. But this institutional wisdom is itself the product of schools because sound common sense tells us that only children can be taught in school. Only by segregating human beings in the category of childhood could we ever get them to submit to the authority of a schoolteacher.
Ivan Illich
Everybody comes with prejudices, colored glasses on their eyes. Then they see everything colored according to their glasses. Yes, a few people come just like you, unprejudiced, without any idea gathered from yellow journalism.
Osho
. But itis obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is preciselylife that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no basis.To say that life is absurd, the conscience must be alive.
Albert Camus
The 'free' laborer, thanks to the development of capitalistic production, agrees, i.e. is compelled by social conditions, to sell the whole of his active life, his birthright for a mass of pottage.
Karl Marx
The trip doesn’t exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears … so long as you carry the sources of your troubles about with you, those troubles will continue to harass and plague you wherever you wander on land or on sea. Does it surprise you that running away doesn’t do you any good? The things you’re running away from are with you all the time.
Seneca
First, however, I must deal with the matter of Jesus, the so-called savior, who not long ago taught new doctrines and was thought to be a son of God. This savior, I shall attempt to show, deceived many and caused them to accept a form of belief harmful to the well-being of mankind. Taking its root in the lower classes, the religion continues to spread among the vulgar: nay, one can even say it spreads because of its vulgarity and the illiteracy of its adherents. And while there are a few moderate, reasonable, and intelligent people who interpret its beliefs allegorically, yet it thrives in its purer form among the ignorant.
Celsus
We arc the miracle of miracles the great inscrutable mystery of God.
Thomas Carlyle
The road from white belt to black is long and arduous; most never reach the end. There are simply too many obstacles of daily life, and too much effort and attention required, for this to be something that the majority of practitioners achieve. This is why a black belt in Jiu Jitsu, especially from a reputable source, is the pinnacle of martial arts rank. It is valuable because of what must be traded for its achievement.
Chris Matakas
You know you walk in the light when the enemy keeps reminding you of your past mistakes, because the enemy's role is to derail into darkness.
Gift Gugu Mona
I was convinced that I would be, that I was already, one in a million.
Simone de Beauvoir
Through Jiu Jitsu I have developed many of the most meaningful relationships in my life, and if that were the only benefit of my practice, Jiu Jitsu would still be the best endeavor I have ever undertaken.
Chris Matakas
Hate hates what it mirrors or envies.
T.F. Hodge
Everyone has their own ways of expression. I believe we all have a lot to say, but finding ways to say it is more than half the battle.
Criss Jami
Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity.
Blaise Pascal
I have one major rule: Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace.
Ken Wilber
I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity.
Stefan Molyneux
Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying.
Christian Furchtegott Gellert
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
Bertrand Russell
If you want to control others you will not be able to meditate. About that one point, be absolutely certain.
Osho
Some people sit at life’ banquet table while others serve them
Bangambiki Habyarimana
To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words- to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam. It is the same with thinking, which is really silent talking. It is not, by itself, open to the discovery of anything new, for its only novelties are simply arrangements of old words and ideas.
Alan W. Watts
It is because the will has no power to bring about salvation that the idea of secular morality is an absurdity. What is called morality only depends on the will in what is, so to speak, its most muscular aspect. Religion on the contrary corresponds to desire, and it is desire that saves...To long for God and to renounce all the rest, that alone can save.
Simone Weil
We see that the vast majority of our suffering is needless, and simply arises from the misidentification with our thinking mind.
Chris Matakas
Technically, according to the notion of the will of God, there is no such a thing as a competent surgeon.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A day, whether six or seven years ago or whether six thousand years ago, is just as near to the present as yesterday. Why? Because all time is contained in now.
Meister Eckhart
But capital not only lives upon labour. Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the crises.
Karl Marx
Manifest plainness Embrace simplicity Reduce selfishness Have few desires.
Lao Tzu
Time stops when you are in love, even as you age.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If a man really knew himself he would utterly despise the ignorant notions others might form on a subject in which he had such matchless opportunities for observation.
George Santayana
Knock on the sky's door, and stars will open it; knock on the universe’s door, and love will open it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
But though I might fill the world with dragons I never had the slighest real doubt that heroes ought to fight with dragons. I must stop to challenge many child-lovers for cruelty to children. It is quite false to say that the child dislikes the fable because it is moral. Very often he likes the moral more than the fable. Adults are reading their own weary mockery into a mind still vigorous enough to be entirely serious.
G.K. Chesterton
Judgment is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all? To prohibit what they think pernicious is not claiming exemption from error, but fulfilling the duty incumbent on them, although fallible, of acting on their conscientious conviction. If we were never to act on our opinions, because those opinions ‘lay be wrong, we should leave all our interests uncared for, and all our duties unperformed. An objection which applies to all conduct can be no valid objection to any conduct in particular.
John Stuart Mill
He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not but rejoices in what he has.
Epictetus
If someone you love and care for is determined to traverse the path of despair, natural law obliges that they ‘will’ regardless of any and all efforts to redirect their lowly path.
T.F. Hodge
Happiness is a quality of the soul...not a function of one's material circumstances.
Aristotle
I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.
Joseph de Maistre
It was the Kojagar full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riverside conversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I was doing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. The poor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine the power to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool?But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, but never got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and from away over there, where the farthest shore of the distant main stream is seen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to this shore, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boat in sight; not a tree, nor blade of grass on the fresh-formed island sand-bank.It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world,—all the kings and the princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished, leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, over which the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the pale moonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of this dying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite shore—the shore of life—where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century hold sway, and tea and cigarettes.
Rabindranath Tagore
Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.
Stanisław Lem