Best 15727 quotes in «philosophy quotes» category

To question reason is to trust it.

To pursue wisdom is to live in such a way that one is prepared to face death when it comes. (247)

To put it succinctly: description without prescription is the germ of resignation, and prescription without description is mere whim.

To reach truth that one cannot be argued out of is to escape from the linguistically expressible to the ineffable. Only the ineffable—what is not describable at all—cannot be described differently.

To reform a religion, one must at first be able to recognize the follies of that religion, then only one can take necessary steps to discard those flaws. If your son has a drug addiction, you need to first recognize the fact that he is addicted to drugs, then you can take action to send him for rehab. Likewise, in order reform a religion’s historical habit of beating wives and using violence on people from other religions, you must first be conscientious enough to accept the fact, that, that specific religion has a history replete with violence, then you can take measures to mend the cultural mindset of that religion.

To save your business, your job, your career, your relationship and your marriage. Choose to over communicate rather than, not to communicate at all.

To search for an indefinable something in a world rife with photocopies is to try the unknown!

To seek contentment is to release the novelty that lies within monotony

To seek His will is to search for His ways.

To say that in every falsehood there is a grain of truth is to treat the two like oil and water, which cannot be mixed and are only externally combined.

To see the first sun rise in New Year is the most sacredness of existence.

To shew thee such tokens I have leave; and if thou wilt pray again, and weep as now, and fast even days, thou shall hear yet greater things.

To some life is a complaint, to some it is a competition and to some it is a conquest.

To sleep on our thoughts,    Is better than to lose sleep       over rash actions

To see the light in your heart, you must first open all windows in your mind which were shut during your early years….

To say that the holocaust was objectively wrong, is to say that the holocaust was wrong even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was right, and it would still have been wrong, even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in brainwashing or exterminating everybody who disagreed with them, so that everyone in the world thought that the holocaust was right and good. To say that the holocaust was objectively wrong, means that it's wrong regardless of the outcome of World War II. The premise is that if there is no God, then moral values or duties are not objective in that sense.

To speak only one language is to do yourself a great injustice.

To stay atop of these such feats is one brave and endless yet rewardless task indeed.

To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing.

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.

To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this: 1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason. 2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right. 3. Charity is immoral. 4. Pay for your own fucking schools.

To take "charity" for granted, to revel in this charity towards people whom one did not know - perhaps it came from having had yesterday and having today and expecting to have tomorrow. She envied them this.

To Taoism that which is absolutely still or absolutely perfect is absolutely dead, for without the possibility of growth and change there can be no Tao. In reality there is nothing in the universe which is completely perfect or completely still; it is only in the minds of men that such concepts exist.

To stay angry is to stay stagnant.

To step into shoes long since worn is a great task by any means, but to step into shoes never yet worn, well, that is a feat few have dared to embark upon.

To strengthen your power of love, Love those who do not deserve your love.

To the enormous majority of persons who risk themselves in literature, not even the smallest measure of success can fall. They had better take to some other profession as quickly as may be, they are only making a sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the narrow gates of fortune and fame. Yet there are others to whom success, though easily within their reach, does not seem a thing to be grasped at. Of two such, the pathetic story may be read, in the Memoir of A Scotch Probationer, Mr. Thomas Davidson, who died young, an unplaced Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He died young, unaccepted by the world, unheard of, uncomplaining, soon after writing his latest song on the first grey hairs of the lady whom he loved. And she, Miss Alison Dunlop, died also, a year ago, leaving a little work newly published, Anent Old Edinburgh, in which is briefly told the story of her life. There can hardly be a true tale more brave and honourable, for those two were eminently qualified to shine, with a clear and modest radiance, in letters. Both had a touch of poetry, Mr. Davidson left a few genuine poems, both had humour, knowledge, patience, industry, and literary conscientiousness. No success came to them, they did not even seek it, though it was easily within the reach of their powers. Yet none can call them failures, leaving, as they did, the fragrance of honourable and uncomplaining lives, and such brief records of these as to delight, and console and encourage us all. They bequeath to us the spectacle of a real triumph far beyond the petty gains of money or of applause, the spectacle of lives made happy by literature, unvexed by notoriety, unfretted by envy. What we call success could never have yielded them so much, for the ways of authorship are dusty and stony, and the stones are only too handy for throwing at the few that, deservedly or undeservedly, make a name, and therewith about one-tenth of the wealth which is ungrudged to physicians, or barristers, or stock-brokers, or dentists, or electricians. If literature and occupation with letters were not its own reward, truly they who seem to succeed might envy those who fail. It is not wealth that they win, as fortunate men in other professions count wealth; it is not rank nor fashion that come to their call nor come to call on them. Their success is to be let dwell with their own fancies, or with the imaginations of others far greater than themselves; their success is this living in fantasy, a little remote from the hubbub and the contests of the world. At the best they will be vexed by curious eyes and idle tongues, at the best they will die not rich in this world’s goods, yet not unconsoled by the friendships which they win among men and women whose faces they will never see. They may well be content, and thrice content, with their lot, yet it is not a lot which should provoke envy, nor be coveted by ambition.

To transcend nature, to be alienated from nature and from another human being, finds man naked, ashamed. He is alone and free, yet powerless and afraid.

To the issues of friendship, love, business and war, "surprise" is the optimistic solution.

To think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct.

To truly accept a thing one must have no inner tension about it.

To the extent that in one's act of faith one participates in the truth through reason and heart, faith already implies a particular level of knowledge and of certainty.

To transform a grimace into a sound sounds impossible, yet it is possible to transform a vision into music, to go outside an enslaved personality, to become impersonal by transforming into sand, into water, into light.

To the extent that anyone gives up the mentality of antithesis, he has moved over to the other side, even if he still tries to defend orthodoxy or evangelicalism. If Christians are to take advantage of the death of romanticism, we must consciously build back the mentality and practice of antithesis among Christians in doctrine and life. We must do it in our teaching and example toward compromise, both ecclesiastically and in evangelism. To fail to exhibit that we take truth seriously at these points where there is a cost in doing so, is to push the next generation into the relative, dialectical millstream that surrounds us.

To those fathers who teach their children on how to be strong. Not to give up. Those who make sure their children get proper education, accommodation and proper life. Those who teach their children right path and making them believe in themselve and that they can do anything. Those who bestore hope , making their children dreamers and go getters. Those who support their children in the things they do and supporting their talent .Those who value their children. Who spend not only money but also time with their children. The fathers who protect , love, respect, admire and care about their children without expecting any payment . To those father who their children are everything to them. To those man who are responsible and who are brave enough to say they love their children. Happy Fathers Day.

To those that are not accustomed to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner.

To understand our faith -- to theologize in the Catholic tradition -- we need philosophy. We must use the philosophical language of God, person, creation, relationship, identity, natural law, virtues, conscience, moral norms if we are to think about religion and defend it. Theology has some terms and methods of its own, but its fundamental tools are borrowed from philosophy. The growth of religious fundamentalism and the collapse of religious education mean theology is more urgently needed in universities -- especially Catholic ones -- than ever before.

To use history is the only alternative to remaining its slave. To escape a continuing bondage to the past, we must understand the past. Only thus can we make it our servant and instrument, and not leave it our master.

To unlock the greatest mysteries we must accept that we are nothing and all that we do know is relative to the size of The Earth in the universes.

To understand and be understood is to be at peace

Tough times don't last always. Your hard times are there to shape you and develop your character. It causes you to become more aware of life and you develop an attitude of gratitude. Don't lose hope because it gets better.

To understand the interior relationship between God and man as a drama of freely-given love is to lay bare the sources of history

To want to know more than is sufficient is a form of intemperance. Apart from which this kind of obsession with the liberal arts turns people into pedantic, irritating, tactless, self-satisfied bores, not learning what they need simply because they spend their time learning things they will never need. The scholar Didymus wrote four thousand works: I should feel sorry him if he had merely read so many useless works.

To win a war you must come to know all the players. All of them. Living ones, who will face you across the field. Dead ones, whose legends are wielded like weapons, or held like eternally beating hearts. Hidden players, inanimate players – the land itself, or the sea, if you will. Forests, hills, mountains, rivers. Currents both seen and unseen – no, Tavore didn't say all that; she was far more succinct, but it's taken me a long time to fully understand. It's not "know your enemy". That's simplistic and facile. No, it's "know your enemies". There's a big difference, Apsalar, because one of your enemies could be the face in the silver mirror.

To write you into poems, and make you unerasable.

To work in the dark, you must be able to hold your own light, and still be intimate with the darkness.

To write well you must both know of the world and the greater message you wish to share with the world beyond that which you write.

To write what you think is to think what you write. Leave those of hollow to their dust. They are but sorry things.

To your parents you are still that innocent baby, and sometimes even you will need your father's hand and your mother's lap.

Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead...Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.