Best 2580 quotes in «philosophical quotes» category

Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

Modern thought does not offer consolations, but upsets.

Money is human happiness in the abstract.

More and more people are becoming unable to accept traditional [religious] beliefs. If they think that, apart from these beliefs, there is no reason for kindly behaviour, the results may be needlessly unfortunate. That is why it is important to show that no supernatural reasons are needed to make [people] kind and to prove that only through kindness can the human race achieve happiness.

Most artists, or at least most of the ones I know, deny having a philosophical outlook that they try to translate into their works. Some had thought of the work of Cezanne and others as being a 'painted epistemology.' But Cezanne himself denied this and Daniel-Henri Kahnwiler, the art critic and art dealer, insisted that none of the many painters he had known had a philosophical culture.

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.

Most thoughts are only profiles of thoughts. They must be inverted and synthesized with their antipodes. Thus many philosophical writings become very interesting which would not have been so otherwise.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

Music can be soothing or invigorating ennobling or vulgarizing, philosophical or orgiastic. It has powers of evil as well as for good.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

My activities have never had anything to do with the idea of becoming famous or achieving success. I have always been concerned with getting people to listen to me. In everything I do ... my aim is to make people listen. I want to communicate the things that I love and in which I believe, because I think that people can derive a general benefit from them. What I really want is success in a philosophical sense: I want people to grasp something of the ideas and hopes which I express in painting.

My ex-wife was a philosophy major at NYU. Yeah, she and I used to have deep philosophical discussions where she would prove that I didn't exist.

My first degree was in mathematics. That was great, but it didn't help with many of the things that puzzled me. I became a philosopher because I wanted to understand everything, especially those things that didn't make sense. And that has continued to be my philosophical motivation. That's one reason I have such a roving philosophical eye - once I have figured out a philosophical topic to my satisfaction, I find myself moving on to new problems.

My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat--a boat which, to revert to Neurath's figure as I so often do, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.

My good friend, you are a citizen of Athens, a city which is very great and very famous for its wisdom and power - are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?

My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side.

My philosophy is inverted Platonism: the further a thing is from true being, the purer, the lovelier, the better it is. Living inillusion as a goal!

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them--as steps--to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the whole world aright.

Myself acquainted with misfortune, I learn to help the unfortunate.

My reason for arguing against abolishing these types of sports isn't some kind of lofty, philosophical rationale. It's just that I did it and I liked it. It comes down to a libertarian issue for me. I feel that if I know the risks and I want to take them, I should be allowed to do so.

Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.

Natura nihil agit frustra [Nature does nothing in vain] is the only indisputible axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature; not any thing framed to fill up empty cantons, and unncecessary spaces.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

Nietzsche said that the earth has been a madhouse long enough. Without contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression, and say that philosophy has been long enough an asylum for enthusiasts.

Newton, Pascal, Bossuet, Racine, F?nelon -- that is to say, some of the most enlightened men on earth, in the most philosophical of all ages -- have been believers in Jesus Christ; and the great Cond?, when dying, repeated these noble words, "Yes, I shall see God as He is, face to face!".

Nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His talk about power, harshness, and superb immorality was the hobby of a harmless young scholar and constitutional invalid.

No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed.

No doubt, intuitions deserve respect. ...[but] I think that it is always up for grabs what an intuition is an intuition of. At a minimum, it is surely sometimes up for grabs.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

No great thing is created suddenly.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

No eulogy is due to him who simply does his duty and nothing more.

No matter what everybody says, ultimately these things can harm us only by the way we react to them.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.

No nice philosophical point has ever been so decisively resolved as this: that those who are not conceived do not miss the pleasure of consuming the goods they do not get born to enjoy.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

No one knows enough to be a pessimist

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

Norman Mailer decocts matters of the first philosophical magnitude from an examination of his own ordure, and I am not talking about his books.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.

No problem is so big and difficult that it can't be blamed on somebody else.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behavior.