Best 2580 quotes in «philosophical quotes» category

There's something in life that's a curtain, and I keep trying to raise it.

The result of civilization, at the Sandwich Islands and elsewhere, is found productive to the civilizers, destructive to the civilizees. It is said to be compensation--a very philosophical word; but it appears to be very much on the principle of the old game, "You lose, I win": good philosophy for the winner.

The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from which a philosophical mind should be free.

There was never a wise saying that couldn't be made wiser by adding the words, "and vice-versa.

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

The role of empirical work in informing our philosophical theories, as I see it, is not that it gives us a better view of our folk concepts, but that it gives us a better view of knowledge, and the mind, and so on.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

The same word passed through three minds, simultaneously, philosophical, fatalistic, the eternal refuge of the Italian: Pazienza.

The science of systematics has long been affected by profound philosophical preconceptions, which have been all the more influential for being usually covert, even subconscious.

The Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdom of God; and to prepare their minds to become his obedient subjects; leavingthe world, and the Philosophy thereof, to the disputation of men, for the exercising of their natural Reason.

These dreams reminded me that, since I wished some day to become a writer, it was high time to decide what sort of books I was going to write. But as soon as I asked myself the question, and tried to discover some subject to which I could impart a philosophical significance of infinite value, my mind would stop like a clock, my consciousness would be faced with a blank, I would feel either that I was wholly devoid of talent or perhaps that some malady of the brain was hindering its development.

The sense of historical continuity, and a feeling for philosophical rectitude cannot, however, be compromised.

The sense that the meaning of the universe had evaporated was what seemed to escape those who welcomed Darwin as a benefactor of mankind. Nietzsche considered that evolution presented a correct picture of the world, but that it was a disastrous picture. His philosophy was an attempt to produce a new world-picture which took Darwinism into account but was not nullified by it.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

The silkworm spins out his life, and, wrapping himself in his labor, dies.

The sinews of war are infinite money.

The so-called mysteries of quantum mechanics are in its philosophical interpretation, not in its mathematics.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

The sole "property" of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside the mind.

The spirit of Plato dies hard. We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality.

The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.

The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz., words) and on the main terms connecting them. Words, or their inscriptions, unlike points, miles, classes and the rest, are tangible objects of the size so popular in the marketplace, where men of unlike conceptual schemes communicate at their best. The strategy is one of ascending to a common part of two fundamentally disparate conceptual schemes, the better to discuss the disparate foundations. No wonder it helps in philosophy.

The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

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

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

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

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 universe is a philosophical abyss.

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

The wisest have the most authority.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

[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.

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