Quotes by Philosophers - Page 74

God is love, and music is the language of love; therefore, music is the language of God. Music is a language more profound than words. How often have you heard a great piece of music and felt that? Great music does not just make you feel good; great music suggests some profound truth or mysterious meaning that is objectively true but not translatable into words.
Peter Kreeft
[Buddhism and Christianity] are in one sense parallel and equal; as a mound and a hollow, as a valley and a hill. There is a sense in which that sublime despair is the only alternative to that divine audacity. It is even true that the truly spiritual and intellectual man sees it as sort of dilemma; a very hard and terrible choice. There is little else on earth that can compare with these for completeness. And he who does not climb the mountain of Christ does indeed fall into the abyss of Buddha.
G.K. Chesterton
A connection could be drawn between the secular ascent of biblical values in today's world and the depreciation of beauty that characterizes it on so many levels. Beauty today is often depreciated as monotonous or denounced as a constraining norm, when it is simply reduced to a pure spectacle accompanied by a rehabilitation or even exaltation of deformity and ugliness, as can be seen in many areas. The degeneration of beauty and the promotion of ugliness, tied to the flowering of intellectualism, could be certainly be part of the Umwertung stigmatized by Nietzsche.
Alain de Benoist
Compassion is the basis of all morality.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Houses are built to live in and not to look on.
Sir Francis Bacon
And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task.
Jostein Gaarder
If Mohammed had been a false prophet. there is no reason why Christ should not have spoken of him as he spoke of Antichrist but if Mohammed is a true Prophet the passages referring to the Paraclete must inevitably concern him - not exclusively but eminently - for it is inconceivable that Christ, when speaking of the future, should have passed over in silence a manifestation of such magnitude. The same reasoning excludes a priori the possibility that Christ. when making his predictions, intended to include Mohammed under the general denomination of'' false prophets", for in the history of our era Mohammed is in no sense a typical example among others of the same kind, but on the contrary, a unique and incomparable apparition(1). If he had been one of the false prophets announced by Christ he would have been followed by others and there would exist in our day a multitude of false religions subsequent to Christ and comparable in importance and extension to Islam. The spirituality to be found within Islam from its origins up to our days is an incontestable fact. and "by their fruits ye shall know them." Moreover, it will be recalled that the Prophet in his doctrine has testified to the second coming of Christ without attributing to himself any glory. unless it be that of being the last Prophet of the cycle and history proves that he spoke the truth, no comparable manifestation having followed after him.
Frithjof Schuon
How would it be after the last sentence? The last sentence he had always feared and from the middle of a book, he had always been tormented by the thought that there would inevitably be a last sentence.
Pascal Mercier
Politics and Sport were invented to give unknowledgeable people an opportunity to share their knowledge.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness—to value the failure of your values—is an insolent negation of morality.
Ayn Rand
The youth gets together this material to build a bridge to the moon or perchance a palace or temple on earth and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
Henry David Thoreau
Never advise a man against his wife or a wife against his husband. When they come together again you will be the archenemy. When they separate, the fault will all be yours
Bangambiki Habyarimana
...moral relativism, a position many find attractive only until they are faced with someone who is doing something really, really wrong.
Peter Singer
The aim of interpretation is not agreement but understanding
Donald Davidson
The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter.
Epictetus
God knew man would evolve. People think some of the Old Testament laws are absurd now because we live in a very different culture, a different time period. They had their problems and we have ours. God is constant but man is not, and he foreknew the ever-changing world his people would have to deal with; therefore, and if there is indeed an omniscient God, a Christ-like figure would be our only rational, possible connection to a constant, holy God throughout the evolution of culture and social law. The only answer that makes sense when it comes to relevance regarding religions and time periods is Christ, and the chances are slim that men could have invented it.
Criss Jami
No matter how tall and wide darkness is, it cannot block the stars.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
George Santayana
We are defined as artists by the pull of our hearts, not the creation of our hands.
Edward Mooney
A miracle is often the willingness to see the common in an uncommon way.
Noah Benshea
Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own
Emanuel Swedenborg
The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well-adjusted", he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists between antisocial types in their power to see environments as they really are. This need to interface, to confront environments with a certain antisocial power is manifest in the famous story "The Emperor's New Clothes".
Marshall McLuhan
He lived far from the gods, but in his mind he was at home with them.
Pythagoras
If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both.
Bodhidharma
Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.
Albert Camus
It was the smile of a man who is able to see, to know and to create the glory of existence. It was the mocking, challenging smile of a brilliant intelligence.
Ayn Rand
Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.
Noam Chomsky
The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and ... people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.
Denis Diderot
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
Henry David Thoreau
Tomorrow belongs to those who learn today.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.
Søren Kierkegaard
The greater the gap between self perception and reality, the more aggression is unleashed on those who point out the discrepancy.
Stefan Molyneux
To finish the moment to find the journey's end in every step of the road to live the greatest number of good hours is wisdom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Death is number one on the list of things that we wish were possible to leave behind when we escaped barbarism.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
It is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,—a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A bird that sings too much will only lose its voice, but a bird that does not sing at all will lose its symphonies.
Matshona Dhliwayo
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.
Umberto Eco
It is still cheating, even if nobody comes.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Physician, heal thyself: then wilt thou also heal thy patient. Let it be his best cure to see with his eyes him who maketh himself whole.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The marriage ceremony is sexist beyond parody. The bride appears in a fussy white dress that symbolizes her virtue and virginity, and everyone keeps on remarking on how thin and beautiful she looks. Her father walks her down the aisle to ‘give her away’, and she passes, like property, from one man to another. The minister, who is traditionally a man, gives the man permission to kiss the woman, as if that is in the minister’s authority and the woman has none. The man kisses, the woman is kissed. At the reception, only men are given to speak, while the bride remains seated and silent. Henceforth, the woman will adopt the man’s name, as will their eventual offspring. Despite all this, the wedding day is said to belong to the woman. This, would you believe, is ‘her day’.
Neel Burton
If you don't fit into a box you can always try to fit into a circle.
Matshona Dhliwayo
We are drawn towards a thing, either because there is some good we are seeking from it, or because we cannot do without it. Sometimes the two motives coincide. Often however they do not. Each is distinct and quite independent. We eat distasteful food, if we have nothing else, because we cannot do otherwise. A moderately greedy man looks out for delicacies, but he can easily do without them. If we have no air we are suffocated, we struggle to get it, not because we expect to get some advantage from it but because we need it. We go in search of sea air without being driven by any necessity, because we like it. In time it often comes about automatically that the second motive takes the place of the first. This is one of the great misfortunes of our race. A man spokes opium in order to attain to a special condition, which he thinks superior; often, as time goes on, the opium reduces him to a miserable condition which he feels to be degrading; but he is no longer able to do without it.
Simone Weil
But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.
René Descartes
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
Henry David Thoreau
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRls). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.
Mark Fisher
As Charles Lamb says there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.
William James
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as 'moral indignation,' which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
Erich Fromm
The phrase *You complete me* is nonsensical. A couple is a *we* … not a complete *me.*
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.
Mortimer J. Adler
[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.
Slavoj Žižek
The belief that personality is mysterious and irreducible has no scientific warrant, and is accepted chiefly because it is flattering to our human self esteem.
Bertrand Russell
Ensure that your fame doesn't bring you shame.
Gift Gugu Mona
A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.
Alain de Botton
The question that surrounds lovemaking is, "Did you cum?" and the unasked question beneath that is, "Am I all right?
Sam Keen
First say to yourself what you would beand then do what you have to do.
Epictetus
An ugly jar full of water is worth more than an empty beautiful one in the desert.
Matshona Dhliwayo