Quotes by Philosophers - Page 41

The man who has dedicated himself to the success of the protect, the master builder, no longer has any freedom: his conduct is now determined altogether by the constraining force of the end. Logically, therefore, he is bound to require at every moment from his companions whatever will best serve that end, and he demands of them imperiously whatever he thinks is of that nature. This imperiousness, though to immediate view that of the master, springs ultimately from the project itself, for it is the project which is in command. In the eyes of those under him, however, it is the master who hustles them, and they think him inhuman by reason of his disregard of their moods and personalities and his inability to see them other than as servants of the project (like himself).
Bertrand De Jouvenel
The infinitude of Jiu Jitsu allows for the infinitude of the types of practitioners. There exists a game for each and every one of us which is specifically possible within the confines of our particular skill set.
Chris Matakas
Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?
Marquis de Sade
Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.
Jean-Paul Sartre
To bear children into this world is like carrying wood to a burning house.
Peter Wessel Zapffe
Each experience of love nudges us toward the Story of Interbeing, because it only fits into that story and defies the logic of Separation.
Charles Eisenstein
The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah...and died to give his work its final consecration never existed. ["Modern Christian Thought: The twentieth century, Volume 2" by James C. Livingston, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, p.13]
Albert Schweitzer
God give me patience, to reconcile with what I am not able to changeGive me strength to change what I canAnd give me wisdom to distinguish one from another.
Marcus Aurelius
Yes, yes, I see it all! — an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of morality, and afterwords, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist — for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?
Miguel de Unamuno
When we look at something, we are often not aware of who is perceiving, and unaware of the mental-emotional filter created by past experiences, hopes and expectations.
Ilchi Lee
Creation, like love, is a seductive pursuit filled with uncertainty and fluttering heartbeats. (Report to Greco)
N. Kazantzakis
Your greatest challenges bring out your greatest potential.
Matshona Dhliwayo
I became aware that there was no barrier between what was inside and what was outside. My body was illuminated by a bright light. I heard with my eyes and saw with my ears. I used my nose as mouth and my mouth as nose. I experienced the world with the totality of my senses as my spirit gathered and my form dissolved. There was no distinction between muscles and bones. My body stopped being heavy and I felt like a floating leaf. Without knowing it, I was being carried by the wind. Drifting here and there, I did not know whether I rode on the wind or the wind rode on me.
Liezi
The more we frequent men, the blacker our thoughts; and when, to clarify them, we return to our solitude, we find there the shadow they have cast.
Emil M. Cioran
There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist. A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I have forgotten my umbrella.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A fish is a genius in water.An eagle is a genius in air.A fox is a genius on land.A sage is a genius in life.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Every healthy person at some period must feed on fiction as well as fact; because fact is a thing which the world gives to him, whereas fiction is a thing which he gives to the world.
G.K. Chesterton
The avoidance of pain is the avoidance of life.
Stefan Molyneux
If a craftsman wants to do good work, he must first sharpen his tools.
Confucius
To drive a woman away, tell her that you are unemployed. To bore her, tell her that you are single.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Nine-tenths of that which is attributed to sexuality is the work of our magnificent ability to imagine, which is no longer an instinct, but exactly the opposite: a creation.
José Ortega y Gasset
Be the greatest thing that has ever happened to you.
Matshona Dhliwayo
What we seek in travel is neither discovery nor trade but rather a gentle deterritorialization: we want to be taken over by the journey - in other words, by absence. As our metal vectors transcend meridians, oceans and poles, absence takes on a fleshy quality. The clandestineness of the depths of private life gives way to annihilation by longitude and latitude. But in the end the body tires of not knowing where it is, even if the mind finds this absence exalting, as if it were a quality proper to itself.Perhaps, after all, what we seek in others is the same gentle deterritorialization that we seek in travel. Instead of one's own desire, instead of discovery, we are tempted by exile in the desire of the other, or by the desire of the other as an ocean to cross. The looks and gestures of lovers already have the distance of exile about them; the language of lovers is an expatriation in words that are afraid to signify; and the bodies of lovers are a tender hologram to eye and hand, offering no resistance and hence susceptible of being crisscrossed, like airspace, by desire. We move around with circumspection on a mental planet of circumvolutions, and from our excesses and passions we bring back the same transparent memories as we do from our travels.
Jean Baudrillard
If there is wisdom in your mind, prove it; joy in your heart, share it; love in your soul, show it; good in your life, impart it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Sometimes we get caught up in trying to glorify God by praising what He can do and we lose sight of the practical point of what He actually does do.
Dallas Willard
The mind shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s wisdom; the heart, in proportion to one’s courage; and the soul, in proportion to one’s love.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The great, like stars, are not afraid of dark times for that is when they shine the brightest.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Fear is uncertainty.
Eric Hoffer
There is nothing inherently painful about being cheated on.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.
Emil M. Cioran
No power on earth, if it labours beneath the burden of fear, can possibly be strong enough to survive.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
If something makes you wealthier,it is of considerable importance.If something makes you happier,it is of substantial importance.If something makes you better,it is of monumental importance.If something makes you wiser,it is of astronomical importance.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Discipline is aimed at formation for a specific end, and that end is determined by our founding narrative.
James K.A. Smith
If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought or action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one's own self-deception and ignorance.
Marcus Aurelius
For the former, activity, any kind of activity, was an end in itself; for the latter, activity was but a progress toward the true end, which was rest, and peace of mind. Action was to be undertaken only when equilibrium was disturbed.
Olaf Stapledon
Women are heavyweight boxers; only, they punch with words, not fists.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.
Elbert Hubbard
The well of your soul will not experience the drought until in front of her will appear the moment of eternity to drink from the water of death.
Sorin Cerin
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A majority of people in these surveys also said that America gives too much aid--but when they were asked how much America should give, the median answers ranged from 5 percent to 10 percent of government spending. In other words, people wanted foreign aid 'cut' to an amount five to ten times greater than the United States actually gives!
Peter Singer
But one must do something about the past. It doesn’t just cease to be. It goes on existing and affecting the present, and in new and different ways, as if in some other dimension it too were growing.
Iris Murdoch
I know none of Time’s cardinal pillar on which it says forever just because eternity is not Time anymore.
Sorin Cerin
Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of objectives.
Alfred North Whitehead
We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bfore Venus, censorious; before Mars, timid.
Michael Walzer
How well you do something determines how well you will be rewarded by it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
People cannot accept their own evil if they do not at the same time feel loved, respected and trusted.
Jean Vanier
Some men succeed by what they know some by what they do and a few by what they are.
Elbert Hubbard
For many of us, especially being so fortunate to live in a first-world country, the vast majority of pain we experience is due to the seriousness with which we identify with our thoughts.
Chris Matakas
If you fall for someone, make sure they’re there to catch you.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Learning is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, and a provision in old age.
Aristotle
We usually learn from debates that we seldom learn from debates.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.
Umberto Eco
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
Jean de La Bruyère
The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited but was defined before it existed.
G.K. Chesterton
The ordinary think inside of the box, the extraordinary think outside of the box, but genius thinks inside, outside, below and above the box.
Matshona Dhliwayo
People will hold an opinion because they want to keep the company of others who share the opinion, or because they think it is the respectable opinion, or because they have publicly expressed the opinion in the past and would be embarrassed by a “U-turn,” or because the world would suit them better if the opinion were true, or . . . Perhaps it is better to get on with your family and friends, to avoid embarrassment, or to comfort yourself with fantasies than to believe the truth. But those who approach matters in this way should give up any pretensions to intellectual seriousness. They are not genuinely interested in reality.
Jamie Whyte
The skill of the politician consists in guessing what people can be brought to think advantageous to themselves; the skill of the experts consists in calculating what really is advantageous, provided people can be brought to think so. (The proviso is essential, because measures which arouse serious resentment are seldom advantageous, whatever merits they may have otherwise.) The power of the politician, in a democracy, depends upon his adopting the opinions which seem right to the average man. It is useless to urge that politicians ought to be high-minded enough to advocate what enlightened opinion considers good, because if they do they are swept aside for others.
Bertrand Russell
As far as the Jews were concerned, the transformation of the "crime" of Judaism into the fashionable "vice" of Jewishness was dangerous in the extreme. Jews had been able to escape from Judaism into conversion; from Jewishness there was no escape. A crime, moreover, is met with punishment; a vice can only be exterminated.
Hannah Arendt