Quotes by Philosophers - Page 55

All brains are good brains. However, information can affect the brain in ways that can distort its functioning. When negative information has taken over the natural workings of the brain, you could say that a good brain has become a bad brain. The brain naturally distinguishes positive information from negative, but sometimes we simply lose trust in our brain, allowing outside information to run the show.
Ilchi Lee
Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.
Voltaire
If I were to envy any persons on this planet, it would be mountain hermits. You often hear old platitudes such as, 'Speak out. Be heard.' On the contrary, a breath of fresh air would be something like: 'Silence, think for at least 15 minutes, and then maybe speak out.
Criss Jami
To err is human, to persist in error is diabolical.
Georges Canguilhem
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The love we give away is the only one we keep.
Elbert Hubbard
It's true not because it's beyond doubt, but because we believe it to be true. We make it true. We are safe as long as no one can disprove us
Bangambiki Habyarimana
One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes’ argument “I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity.
Jean-Paul Sartre
People do not see that the main question is not : "Am I loved?" which is to a large extent the question : "Am I approved of? Am I protected? Am I admired?" The main question is: "Can I love?
Erich Fromm
But nothing will help quite so much as just keeping quiet, talking with other people as little as possible, with yourself as much as possible. For conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insinuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor. Nobody will keep the things he hears to himself, and nobody will repeat just what he hears and no more. Neither will anyone who has failed to keep a story to himself keep the name of his informant to himself. Every person without exception has someone to whom he confides everything that is confided to himself. Even supposing he puts some guard in his garrulous tongue and is content with a single pair of ears, he will still be the creator of a host of later listeners – such is the way in which what was but a little while before a secret becomes common rumor.
Seneca
We work for peace every time we exercise authority with wisdom and authentic love.
Jean Vanier
If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
Dōgen
An open heart leaves a breach for someone to pour love into it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Utilizing all of your mind is a step towards brilliance.Utilizing all of your heart is a step towards excellence.Utilizing all of your soul is a step towards nobleness.Utilizing all of your mind, heart, and soul is a step towards greatness.
Matshona Dhliwayo
476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc.,etc.Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, "Is there such a thing as a unicorn?" and so on. But such a question is possible only because as a rule no corresponding question presents itself. For how does one know how to set about satisfying oneself of the existence of unicorns? How did one learn the method for determining whether something exists or not?477. "So one must know that the objects whose names one teaches a child by an ostensive definition exist." - Why must one know they do? Isn't it enough that experience doesn't later show the opposite?For why should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge?478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists?479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
We are gods but we are afraid of the ensuing responsibility; that's why we prefer to remain slaves. Only if we dared to rise up to the challenge and assume our divinity, we could perform most of the miracles we pray for.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Every sweet hath its sour every evil its good.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything has its "that," everything has its "this." From the point of view of "that" you cannot see it, but through understanding you can know it. So I say, "that" comes out of "this" and "this" depends on "that" - which is to say that "this" and "that" give birth to each other. But where there is birth there must be death; where there is death there must be birth. Where there is acceptability there must be unacceptability; where there is unacceptability there must be acceptability. Where there is recognition of right there must be recognition of wrong; where there is recognition of wrong there must be recognition of right. Therefore the sage does not proceed in such a way, but illuminates all in the light of Heaven. He too recognizes a "this," but a "this" which is also "that," a "that" which is also "this." His "that" has both a right and a wrong in it; his "this" too has both a right and a wrong in it. So, in fact, does he still have a "this" and "that"? Or does he in fact no longer have a "this" and "that"? A state in which "this" and "that" no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its right then is a single endlessness and its wrong too is a single endlessness. So, I say, the best thing to use is clarity.
Zhuangzi
O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, butthe tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression.Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa,have long expelled her.?Europe regards her like a stranger, and Englandhath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare intime an asylum for mankind.
Thomas Paine
The Golden Rule is intolerable; if millions did to others whatever they wished others to do to them, few would be safe from molestation. The Golden Rule shows anything but moral genius, and the claim by which it is followed in the Sermon on the Mount -- 'this is the Law and the Prophets' -- makes little sense.
Walter Kaufmann
Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person.
Ayn Rand
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.
Karl Marx
Commitment is an act, not a word
Jean-Paul Sartre
There are no facts only interpretations.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Manipulation, fueled with good intent, can be a blessing. But when used wickedly, it is the beginning of a magician's karmic calamity.
T.F. Hodge
There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
Bertrand Russell
The realm of liberation is absolutely incommensurable with the relativities of higher and lower, better and worse, gain and loss, since these are all disadvantages of the ego.
Alan W. Watts
Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.
Hermann Broch
It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.
Niccolò Machiavelli
The mind's health depends on what it feeds on. Avoid thoughts and conversations that kill your soul.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
The intention to be absolutely truthful and the willingness to put the benefit of all before personal benefit hold the power to change the world.
Ilchi Lee
The reason why I smile even in the midst of the storm is because I know that Jesus Christ will carry me through.
Gift Gugu Mona
That which is now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning does not consist, as the schools now make it consist, in the knowledge of languages, but in the knowledge of things to which language gives names.
Thomas Paine
You worry yourself unnecessarily. Put the thought of hitting right out of your mind!
Eugen Herrigel
Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.
Roger Scruton
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To witness miracles unfold in your experience, count your blessings and be thankful. Perceived small blessings accumulate to be the most powerful.
T.F. Hodge
The thing that attracted me about philosophy was that it went straight to essentials. I had never liked fiddling detail; I perceived the general significance of things rather than their singularities, and I preferred understanding to seeing; I had always wanted to know everything; philosophy would allow me to appease this desire, for it aimed at total reality;philosophy went right to the heart of truth and revealed to me, instead of an illusory whirlwind of facts or empirical laws, an order, a reason, a necessity in everything.
Simone de Beauvoir
Live mindful of how brief your life is.
Horace
You can't discuss the ocean with a well frog - he's limited by the space he lives in. You can't discuss ice with a summer insect - he's bound to a single season.
Zhuangzi
It is easier for a man to burn down his own house than to get rid of his prejudices.
Roger Bacon
Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.
Socrates
Kill reverence and you've killed the hero in man.
Ayn Rand
Dream while others are sleeping. Dare while others are wishing. Do while others are talking. Deliver while others are quitting.
Matshona Dhliwayo
A notable politician once said that it takes a village to raise a child. She forgot that it takes a family to raise a village. And the destruction of the family, largely due to policies and movements that she supports, has razed the village to the ground.
Eric Robert Morse
I think this business of good vs. evil is of no interest to the power hungry
Bangambiki Habyarimana
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
Socrates
That comes to about one hundred million people in India alone from 1947 to 1980. But we don’t call that a crime of democratic capitalism. If we were to carry out that calculation throughout the world… I wont even talk about it. But Sen is correct; they’re not intended, just like the Chinese famine wasn’t intended. But they are ideological and institutional crimes, and capitalist democracy and its advocates are responsible for them, in whatever sense supporters of so-called Communism are responsible for the Chinese famine. We don’t have the entire responsibility, but certainly a large part of it
Noam Chomsky
Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere.
Søren Kierkegaard
Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hears men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?
G.K. Chesterton
He lives happy and master of himself who can say as each day passes on, "I have lived.
Michel de Montaigne
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
Aldous Huxley
When I turn my mind's eye upon myself, I understand that I am a thing which is incomplete and dependent on another and which aspires without limit to ever greater and better things...
René Descartes
Shakespeare is to me the purest voice of nature, and he does no meddle with nature. His plays provide us with the greatest variety of erotic expression, and with Shakespeare eros is the proper term to use.
Allan Bloom
The further you are in the wilderness, the closer the Promised Land is.
Matshona Dhliwayo
In short, self-rule is workable only when a people are self-sufficient enough to reject the hierarchic system as it stands.
Eric Robert Morse
I see that you have come to the last stage of human life; you are close upon your hundreth year, or even beyond: come now, hold an audit of your life. Reckon how much of your time has been taken up by a money-lender, how much by a mistress, a patron, a client, quarreling with your wife, punishing your slaves, dashing about the city on your social obligations. Consider also the diseases which we have brought on ourselves, and the time too which has been unused. You will find that you have fewer years than you reckon. Call to mind when you ever had a fixed purpose; how few days have passed as you had planned; when you were ever at your own disposal; when your face wore its natural expression; when your mind was undisturbed; what work you have achieved in such a long life; how many have plundered your life when you were unaware of your losses; how much you have lost through groundless sorrow, foolish joy, greedy desire, the seductions of society; how little of your own was left to you. You will realize that you are dying prematurely.
Seneca
In our worldly perceptions of Jesus, we tend to embrace the kindness of his love ('be encouraged') but not the discipline of his love ('and sin no more'). But with the whole scope of his love, or maturity in Christ, we begin relying on him for guidance where we would prefer him to walk beside us rather than behind us.
Criss Jami
However, on one occasion, several years ago, I was idiot enough to take a dose of LSD. (I did it to please a woman.) I had what is known as a 'bad trip'. It was a very bad trip. I shall not attempt to describe what I experienced on that dreadful and rather shameful occasion. (I will only add: it concerned entrails.) In fact it would be extremely hard, even impossible, to put it properly into words. It was something morally, spiritually horrible, as if one's stinking inside had emerged and become the universe: a surging emanation of dark half-formed spiritual evil, something never ever to be escaped from. 'Undetachable,' I remember, was a word which somehow 'came along' with the impression of it. In fact the visual images involved were dreadfully clear and, as it were, authoritative ones and they are rising up in front of me at this moment, and I will not write about them. Of course i never took LSD again.
Iris Murdoch