Best 2580 quotes in «philosophical quotes» category

The two powers which in my opinion constitute a wise man are those of bearing and forbearing.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

The ultimate philosophical challenge is to reveal the ontology of God.

The universe is a philosophical abyss.

The unphilosophical and philosophical attitudes can be very sharply distinguished (with scarcely any intermediate forms) by the fact that the first accepts everything that happens as regards its general form, and finds occasion for surprise only in that special content by which something that happens here today differs from what happened there yesterday; whereas for the second, it is precisely the common features of all experience, such as characterise everything we encounter, which are the primary and most profound occasion for astonishment.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

The war in vietnam threatened to tear our society apart, and the political and philosophical disagreements that separated each side continue, to some extent. It's been said that these memorials reflect a hunger for healing.

The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united.

The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

The wisest have the most authority.

The winding down of summer puts me in a heavy philosophical mood.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

The work with which we embark on this first volume of a series of theological studies is a work with which the philosophical person does not begin, but rather concludes.

The world is a philosophical prison and Man is the philosophical prisoner.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

They gutted the book, making an action movie for 15-25 year olds. Tolkien became...devoured by his popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of the time. The gap widened between the beauty, the seriousness of the work, and what it has become is beyond me. This level of marketing reduces to nothing the aesthetic and philosophical significance of this work.

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

They do certainly give very strange, and newfangled, names to diseases.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

Thinking in terms of risk certainly has its unsettling aspects (...), but it is also a means of seeking to stabilise outcomes, a mode of colonising the future. The more or less constant, profound and rapid momentum of change characteristic of modern institutions, coupled with structured reflexivity, mean that on the level of everyday practice as well as philosophical [Seitenwechsel] interpretation, nothing can be taken for granted. What is acceptable/appropriate/recommended behaviour today may be seen differently tomorrow in the light of altered circumstances or incoming knowledge-claims.

Things bring their own philosophy with them, that is, prudence.

Think I'll flip a coin, I'm a winner either way Mmmmmm, I feel lucky today

This is a major, wide-ranging, and comprehensive book. A philosophical investigation that is also a literary and historical study, Truth and Truthfulness asks how and why we have come to think of accuracy, sincerity, and authenticity as virtues. Bernard Williams' account of their emergence is as detailed and imaginative as his defense of their importance is spirited and provocative. Williams asks hard questions, and gives them straightforward and controversial answers. His book does not simply describe and advocate these virtues of truthfulness; it manifests them.

[This approach] displays the characteristic philosophical lust to vanquish the skeptic by arguing him out of his skepticism, without appeal to moral and political considerations or to the facts of everyday life. [...] But more often than not, if you give the skeptic everything he wants, then he will be successful in repulsing your attacks and terrorizing your position.

This is the fundamental idea of culture, insofar as it sets but one task for each of us: to further the production of the philosopher, of the artist, and of the saint within us and outside us, and thereby to work at the consummation of nature.

This prophecy of a coming enlightenment is echoed in virtually every faith and philosophical tradition on Earth. Hindus call it the Krita Age, astrologers call it the Age of Aquarius, the Jews describe the coming of the Messiah, theosophists call it the New Age, cosmologists call it Harmonic Convergence and predict the actual date of December 21, 2012.

This is the very perfection of a man, to find out his own imperfections.

This philosophical postulate that the end of all being is the happiness of man has been sort-of covered over with evangelical terms and biblical doctrine - until God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man, Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of man, all the angels exist and ... everything is for the happiness of man - and I submit to you that this is unchristian.

This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

Thousands of years of ideological, philosophical and practical decisions were made. They altered the surface of the earth, the coordinates of our souls. For every one of those decisions, maybe there's another decision that could have been made, should have been made.

Thrift is of great revenue.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

Time meanwhile is flying, flying beyond recall.

To abstain from sin when one can no longer sin is to be forsaken by sin, not to forsake it.

To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will-to-life. At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life as his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental principle of the moral, and it is a necessity of thought.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.

To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.

Too fair to worship, too divine to love.

To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs.

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Trust one who has tried.