Philosophic Quotes - Page 4

• In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.

  William James

  Real, Views, Sweat

  William James (2015). “Pragmatism: Human Understanding”, p.26, 谷月社

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• Whoever accepts the higher mission of art and comes nearer and nearer to it through his creative activity, will then go on from art to the Spirit deep within his own self... The philosophic search for enlightenment and the artist's search for perfection of work can meet and unite. Art can be a path to spiritual enlightenment but not to complete and lasting enlightenment. It can be born out of, and can give birth itself to, only Glimpses. For art is a search for beauty, which by itself is not enough. Beauty must be supported by virtue and both require wisdom to guide them.

  Paul Brunton

  Spiritual, Art, Self

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• In years that bring the philosophic mind.

  William Wordsworth

  Years, Mind

  'Ode. Intimations of Immortality' (1807) st. 10

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• What do you mean by faith? Is faith enough for Man? Should he be satisfied with faith alone? Is there no way of finding out the truth? Is the attitude of faith, of believing in something for which there can be no more than philosophic proof, the true mark of a Christian?

  Clifford D. Simak

  Christian, Attitude, Believe

  Clifford D. Simak (2015). “Time Is the Simplest Thing”, p.49, Open Road Media

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• Thus you may multiply each stone 4 times & no more for they will then become oyles shining in ye dark and fit for magicall uses. You may ferment them with gold and silver, by keeping the stone and metal in fusion together for a day, & then project upon metalls. This is the multiplication of ye stone in vertue. To multiply it in weight ad to it of ye first Gold whether philosophic or vulgar.

  Isaac Newton

  Science, Dark, Shining

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• Modern Existentialism... is a total European creation, perhaps the last philosophic legacy of Europe to America or whatever other civilization is now on its way to supplant Europe.

  William Barrett

  Europe, Civilization, America

  William Barrett (2011). “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy”, p.14, Anchor

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• As the highly colored birds do not fly around in the dull, leaden plains of a sandy desert, but amid all the settings of nature's leaves and blossoms, and lights and shades — nature's framework of their picture — so there are truths which do not appear well in arid fields of philosophic inquiry.

  David Swing

  Light, Air, Bird

  "Motives of Life".

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• The chief requisite for the making of a good chicken pie is chicken; no amount of culinary legerdemain can make up for the lack of chicken. In the same way, the chief requisite for the history of science is intimate scientific knowledge; no amount of philosophic legerdemain can make up for its absence.

  George Sarton

  Pie, Way, Absence

  George Sarton (1918). “The Teaching of the History of Science”

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• In a very philosophic sense I think doing the work is itself a good thing. But at the end of the day, since we're taking other people's shekels to do it, and their work is being able to make a return out of it, it forces you to consider the fact that you're doing it for other people. The whole construct is built around the assumption that it's going to get shared, and that someone else is going to find value in it - entertainment, catharsis, enlightenment, or whatever.

  Edward Norton

  Thinking, People, The End Of The Day

  Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

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• I started to call myself a "rational therapist" in January 1955; later I used the term "rational emotive." Now I call myself a "rational emotive behavior therapist." But from the start, I always included philosophic techniques as well as experiential, emotional and behavioral techniques.

  Albert Ellis

  Emotional, Technique, January

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• When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.

  John Adams

  Miracle, Intuition, Atheism

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.85

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• If freedom is to flourish the philosophic foundations of a free society must be kept a living intellectual issue and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of the liveliest minds.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Issues, Imagination, Challenges

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• Recognition of the modes of existence of technical objects must be the result of philosophic consideration; what philosophy has to achieve in this respect is analogous to what the abolition of slavery achieved in affirming the worth of the individual human being.

  Gilbert Simondon

  Philosophy, Abolition Of Slavery, Recognition

  "On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects". Book by Gilbert Simondon, University of Western Ontario, June 1980.

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• The adjective "political" in "political philosophy" designates not so much the subject matter as a manner of treatment; from this point of view, I say, "political philosophy" means primarily not the philosophic study of politics, but the political, or popular, treatment of philosophy, or the political introduction to philosophy the attempt to lead qualified citizens, or rather their qualified sons, from the political life to the philosophic life.

  Leo Strauss

  Philosophy, Mean, Son

  "What is Political Philosophy?". Book by Leo Strauss, 1959.

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• The efficacy of religion lies precisely in what is not rational, philosophic, nor eternal; its efficacy lies in the unforeseen, the miraculous, the extraordinary. Thus religion attracts more devotion according as it demands more faith - that is to say, as it becomes more incredible to the profane mind.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Lying, Mind, Atheism

  "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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• But there are still many who continue to marvel at the wisdom of God in so planning the universe that big rivers run by great towns, and that death comes at the end of life instead of in the middle of it. Divest pleas ... of their semi-philosophic jargon, reduce his illustrations to homely similes, and he is marvelling at the wisdom of God who so planned things that the two extremities of a piece of wood should come at the ends instead of in the middle.

  Chapman Cohen

  Running, Illustration, Two

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• Consequently, the first thing to be done in any search after philosophic principles is to travel over the special sciences with a view to extracting from them such information as is relevant to our purpose.

  Hugh Elliot

  Views, Special, Atheism

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• Paul Brunton's Notebooks are a veritable treasure-trove of philosophic-spiritual wisdom.

  Copyright: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Family Limited Partnership.

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

  Notebook, Spiritual, Treasure

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• Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Wise, World, Might

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “Collected Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.166, e-artnow

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• If you study Japanese art you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant and then the seasons, the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure. So he passes his life, and life is too short to do the whole.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Wise, Art, Distance

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• ...the act of eating,which hath by several wise men been considered as extremely mean and derogatory from the philosophic dignity, must be in some measure performed by the greatest prince, hero, or philosopher upon earth; nay, sometimes Nature hath been so frolicsome as to exact of these dignified characters a much more exorbitant share of this office than she hath obliged those of the lowest orders to perform.

  Henry Fielding

  Wise, Hero, Food

  Henry Fielding (1844). “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling: With the Life of the Author : in Two Volumes”, p.443

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• I needn't tell you that success and failure prove nothing - the whole thing is a lottery. It's pleasant to succeed; but for a philosophic mind it oughtn't to be very upsetting to fail.

  George Sand

  Upset, Mind, Succeed

  Gustave Flaubert, George Sand (1999). “Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence of Gustave Flaubert & George Sand”, Harvill Press

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• Science, like art, religion, political theory, or psychoanalysis - is work that holds out the promise of philosophic understanding, excites in us the belief that we can 'make sense of it all.

  Vivian Gornick

  Art, Science, Political

  Vivian Gornick (2013). “Women in Science: Then and Now”, p.53, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church.

  Edward Gibbon

  Hands, Law, Omnipotence

  Edward Gibbon (1854). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.84

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• Atheism ... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

  Emma Goldman

  Fighting, Men, Ideas

  Emma Goldman (1915). “Mother Earth Bulletin”

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