Best 15727 quotes in «philosophy quotes» category

...We find our greatest peace when we embrace something that gives meaning to our lives. Often, it is love for somebody or something we can give up our lives for, or somebody or something that we are sure will never betray us. That love could be for a partner, for our offspring, for a country or for a belief...

We have an infinite supply of information and yet we cannot read.

WE GROW IN SPIRIT WITH EACH LESSON LEARNED THROUGH EXPERIENCE... LET US BE THANKFUL NO MATTER HOW PAINFUL THE LESSON!!!

We had taken him for a Norwegian ship's captain and had come to his table to hear some more about seafaring, not about philosophy, from which, indeed, we had fled north from Central Europe.

We had sat on a bench to take a moments break earlier and we discussed the possibility of always being this high, obviously in love with the feeling of the world being perfect. Daren was sold on this possibility, thinking that this was the way to happiness. As happy as it made me I knew it was an experience that could not be repeated. When an experience is new or when it has not been felt in a long time, that is when it is its most profound. I knew it could not be repeated the same way. Beauty is so rarely repeated in experience. So they say, pleasure comes in halves.

We grow up in a world where satisfying our cravings seems to be the number one objective, every advertisement on television and the newspaper calls for one craving or another to be dealt with. When it comes to sex we are bombarded every which way, so much so, that we think solving our cravings is the only way and the right way.

We had a horrible fear of him because we sensed he was alone.

We have a set of rules for our faith, our sexuality, our marriages, our dating relationships, for choosing a church—nothing is off-limits. We tell ourselves to always do this, and never do that, and everything will turn out perfectly. Worse than that, we back up our rules with Bible verses and tell everyone else to follow them too.

We have become used to obstructionist ideas. In the name of modernisation we are unconsciously hindering the natural flow of life. The fact that we are irritated, depressed, and distressed speaks volumes of our illogical ambitions to acquire control of this planet. Mostly, philosophically challenged and scant respect for natural way of life is making us irrelevant.

We have a perfect idea of a natural enemy when we think of the devil, because the enmity is perpetual, unalterable and unabateable. It admits, neither of peace, truce, or treaty; consequently the warfare eternal and therefore is natural. But man with man cannot arrange in the same opposition. Their quarrels are accidental and equivocally created. They become friends or enemies as the change of temper, or the cast of interest inclines them. The Creator of man did not constitute them the natural enemy of each other. He has not made any one order of beings so. Even wolves may quarrel, still they herd together. If any two nations are so, then must all nations be so, otherwise it is not nature but custom, and the offence frequently originates with the accuser.

We have conversations most nights, Sylvia Plath and me!

..we have become wealthy, and wealth is the prelude to art. In every country where centuries of physical effort have accumulated the means for luxury and leisure, culture has followed as naturally as vegetation grows in a rich and watered soil. To have become wealthy was the first necessity; a people too must live before it can philosophize. No doubt we have grown faster than nations usually have grown; and the disorder of our souls is due to the rapidity of our development. We are like youths disturbed and unbalanced, for a time, by the sudden growth and experiences of puberty. But soon our maturity will come; our minds will catch up with our bodies, our culture with our possessions. Perhaps there are greater souls than Shakespeare's, and greater minds than Plato's, waiting to be born. When we have learned to reverence liberty as well as wealth, we too shall have our Renaissance.

We have had heroes here, and now He will be over hero for The Grand Journey.

We have explored this world and now is the time to explore the world in which our world resides.

We have no heart at seventeen. We think we do; we think we have been cursed with a holy, bloated thing that twitches at the name we adore, but it is not a heart because though it will forfeit anything in the world-the mind, the body, the future, even the last lonely hour it has-it will not sacrifice itself.

We have seen, therefore, that I am not allowed even to *assume*, for the sake of the necessary practical use of my reason *God, freedom, immortality*, unless at the same time *I deprive* speculative reason of its pretensions to transcendent insights. Reason, namely, in order to arrive at these, must employ principles which extend only to objects of possible experience, and which, if in spite of this they are applied also to what cannot be an object of experience, actually always change this into an appearance, thus rendering all practical *expansion* of pure reason impossible. Hence I had to suspend *knowledge* in order to make room for *belief*. For the dogmatism of metaphysics without a preceding critique of pure reason, is the source of all that disbelief which opposes morality and which is always very dogmatic.

We have negative mental habits that come up over and over again. One of the most significant negative habits we should be aware of is that of constantly allowing our mind to run off into the future. Perhaps we got this from our parents. Carried away by our worries, we're unable to live fully and happily in the present. Deep down, we believe we can't really be happy just yet—that we still have a few more boxes to be checked off before we can really enjoy life. We speculate, dream, strategize, and plan for these "conditions of happiness" we want to have in the future; and we continually chase after that future, even while we sleep. We may have fears about the future because we don't know how it's going to turn out, and these worries and anxieties keep us from enjoying being here now.

We have the power to move mountain, if we have faith that the mountain can be moved.

We have to pay a price for our every desire in order to achieve them” and that means, there is no such a thing as “something for nothing

We, humans, have come up with so many superficialities that are completely unnecessary for our existence and happiness on earth.

Weigh thou therefore their wickedness now in the balance, and theirs also that dwell the world; and so shall thy name no where be found anymore.

We hold the future still timidly, but perceive it for the first time as a function of our own action.

We know so many facts that summed together present human knowledge, but we don't know enough about the knowledge itself. Moreover, we don't know the extent of human knowledge compared to all knowledge.

We know what wood is and what earth and stone are and that they have a color and texture, a smell and even a taste, but matter as a perceptible material substance independent of the nature of the wood, earth and stone composed of it seems incomprehensible. In order for us to regard a thing as real it must possess at least some distinctive physical qualities. We must be able to experience it as a physical thing before we can decide it is real. Matter as proposed by modern science, however, has no distinctive or definite physical qualities at all. Matter is simply some unimaginable stuff possessing no conceivable definition whatsoever. The concept of matter, then, proves to be just as elusive and abstract as the concepts of spirit, soul or the life-principle.

Welcome all, befriend several, but trust only a few.

We know the cause which we are engaged in, and though a passionate fondness for it may make us grieve at every injury which threatens it, yet, when the moment of concern is over, the determination to duty returns. We are not moved by the gloomy smile of a worthless king, but by the ardent glow of generous patriotism. We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in. In such a case we are sure that we are right; and we leave to you the despairing reflection of being the tool of a miserable tyrant.

Welcome to Planet Earth, the destination of fragmented wisdom.

We lead a difficult life, not always managing to fit our actions to the vision we have of the world. (And when I think I have caught a glimpse of the color of my fate, it flees from my gaze.) We struggle and suffer to reconquer our solitude. But a day comes when the earth has its simple and primitive smile. Then, it is as if the struggles and life within us were rubbed out. Millions of eyes have looked at this landscape, and for me it is like the first smile of the world. It takes me out of myself, in the deepest meaning of the expression. It assures me that nothing matters except my love, and that even this love has no value for me unless it remains innocent and free. It denies me a personality, and deprives my suffering of its echo. The world is beautiful, and this is everything. The great truth which it patiently teaches me is that neither the mind nor even the heart has any importance. And that the stone warmed by the stone or the cypress tree swelling against the empty sky set a boundary to the only world in which "to be right" has any meaning: nature without men. This world reduces me to nothing. It carries me to the very end. Without anger, it denies that I exist. And, agreeing to my defeat, I move toward a wisdom where everything has already been conquered -- except that tears come into my eyes, and this great sob of poetry which swells my heart makes me forget the truth of the world.

We leave behind what we do sow.

We like to admit to only that which already glows, although it is nobler to support brightness before it glows, not afterwards.

we live best when we live for a cause greater than ourselves

We live and learn, change and grow. Older, but not always wiser. Stronger but not necessarily smarter. Life is a dance of steps taken forward and backwards, time spent standing still, and twirling in circles as we follow our own shadows.

We live in a highly complex, technological world – and it's not entirely obvious what's right and what's wrong in any given situation, unless you can parse the situation, deconstruct it. People just don't have the insight to be able to do that very effectively.

We live in a society where every business has a huge scope. Even if you open a shop selling snakes people will buy it. Thinking they will direct them to their neighbors house.

We live in a stocking which is in the process of being turned inside out, without our ever knowing for sure to what phase of the process our moment of consciousness corresponds.

We live in a nation where education and free thought are tantamount to treason, and I have to ask, under these circumstances, is treason such a bad thing?

we live our lives from the "inside", from the vantage point of our own personal mini-cam on life. This gives us privileged access to what's going on inside our own heads. But sometimes we can be too close to ourselves to see us as we truly are. We lack perspective, objectivity. That's where friends can help. Friends can tell you when you're selfish or rude or making a total fool of yourself. Conversely, they can let you know when you're being kind or generous or need to lighten up on yourself.

We live in deeds not years In thoughts not breaths In feelings not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.

Well,” Harry said, “look at it this way: Suppose you were an intelligent bacterium floating in space, and you came upon one of our communication satellites, in orbit around the Earth. You would think, What a strange, alien object this is, let’s explore it. Suppose you opened it up and crawled inside. You would find it very interesting in there, with lots of huge things to puzzle over. But eventually you might climb into one of the fuel cells, and the hydrogen would kill you. And your last thought would be: This alien device was obviously made to test bacterial intelligence and to kill us if we make a false step. “Now, that would be correct from the standpoint of the dying bacterium. But that wouldn’t be correct at all from the standpoint of the beings who made the satellite. From our point of view, the communications satellite has nothing to do with intelligent bacteria. We don’t even know that there are intelligent bacteria out there. We’re just trying to communicate, and we’ve made what we consider a quite ordinary device to do it.

We'll never be heroes when we're always waiting to be saved.

Well old man, I guess freedom's a continuum.

Well, on some level, it’s similar to the psychological phenomenon of helplessness, where the will to try is lost. You get to the point where you just assume that your spontaneous call to a friend will go to voicemail or an assistant, and you decide not to bother.

We love ourselves notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner.

Well...yeah. It just goes to show. (Peabody) Show what (Dallas) You should get dressed up, go dancing, drink grown-up cocktails, and have sex as much as you can before you're dead. (Peabody)

We made our dream your reality. - The Malwatch

We may be living past and future lives at the same time we are living this one.

We may be near or far away but nothing matters to us. You and I are soulmates!

We middles see the world in shades of grey rather than in the clear blacks and whites of committed animal activists and their equally vociferous opponents

We must learn about difference for difference to become the normal.

We might feel we have achieved a lot. . just take a pause and look back. . We will see only darkness....