Philosophical Quotes - Page 17

• If a person sings quietly to himself on the street people smile with approval; but if he talks it's not alright; they think he's crazy. The singer is presumed to be happy and the talker unhappy.

  Edward Hoagland

  Crazy, Thinking, People

  Edward Hoagland (1992). “Balancing acts: essays”

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• I always know a lie when I hear it, and the effect it has on me is no good at all. I go berserk just forcing myself not to go berserk, just trying to see truth in the lie, to see it in full context, and in a dimension in which it has got to be more than just a lie, possibly the profoundest kind of truth.

  William Saroyan

  Lying, Trying, Dimensions

  William Saroyan (1970). “Days of Life and Death and Escape to the Moon. (2. Print.)”

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• There was a time in our past when one could walk down any street and be surrounded by harmonious buildings. Such a street wasn't perfect, it wasn't necessarily even pretty, but it was alive. The old buildings smiled, while our new buildings are faceless. The old buildings sang, while the buildings of our age have no music in them.

  Jonathan Hale

  Past, Old Buildings, Perfect

  Jonathan Hale (1994). “The Old Way of Seeing”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image

  Bruce Lee

  Self, Differences, People

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• On the road halfway between faith and criticism stands the inn of reason. Reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it's still a faith, since to understand presupposes that there's something understandable.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Criticism, Reason, Inns

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.169, Penguin UK

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• Every artist is an unhappy lover.

  Iris Murdoch

  Artist, Unhappy, Lovers

  Iris Murdoch (2003). “The Black Prince”, p.23, Penguin

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• Are we not all shipwrecked,...condemned to death?... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Race, Together, Insult

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• Every spoken word double-crosses us. The written word is the only tolerable form of communication, as it isn't a stone in a bridge between souls but a ray of light between stars.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Stars, Communication, Bridges

  "Book of Disquietude".

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

  Maxine Hong Kingston

  Trying, Curtains, Raises

  Maxine Hong Kingston, Paul Skenazy, Tera Martin (1998). “Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston”, p.34, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The more I go into I, the more I fall out of I.

  Ken Wilber

  Fall

  Ken Wilber (1998). “The Essential Ken Wilber”, p.25, Shambhala Publications

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• To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs.

  Andre Gide

  Soul, Awkward, Feelings

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• God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.

  Meister Eckhart

  Simplicity, Soul, Process

  Eckhart (Meister), Matthew Fox (1980). “Breakthrough, Meister Eckhart's creation spirituality, in new translation”, Doubleday Books

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• If life has given us no more than a prison cell, let's at least decorate it as best we can-with the shadows of our dreams, their colourful patterns engraving our oblivion on the static surface of the walls.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Wall, Cells

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• It's only when I say that everything is incomprehensible that I come as close as possible to understanding the only thing it is given to us to understand.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Understanding, Given

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• The partition separating life from death is so tenuous. The unbelievable fragility of our organism suggests a vision on a screen: a kind of mist condenses itself into a human shape, lasts a moment and scatters.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Vision, Lasts, Fragility

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• The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.

  Noam Chomsky

  Issues, Experts, Fundamentals

  Noam Chomsky (2010). “The Chomsky Reader”, p.71, Pantheon

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• But the philosophical and scientific process which I call 'secularization' necessarily involves the divesting of spiritual meaning from the world of nature; the desacralization of politics from human affairs; and the deconsecration of values from the human mind and conduct.

  Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

  Spiritual, Mind, World

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• he who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors

  Martin Heidegger

  Philosophy, Thinking, Errors

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• All the world's a stage.

  William Shakespeare

  Inspirational, Motivational, Dance

  'As You Like It' (1599) act 2, sc. 7, l. 139

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• The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action.

  Bruce Lee

  Self, Execution, Action

  Bruce Lee (2015). “Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living”, p.57, Tuttle Publishing

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• I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing—the solution of the social problem is in liberty.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Religious, Believe, Responsibility

  Frederic Bastiat (2017). “The Law”, p.39, Lulu.com

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• The illusion of the seventh veil was the illusion that you could get somebody else to do it for you. To think for you. To hang on your cross. The priest, the rabbi, the imam, the swami, the philosophical novelist were traffic cops, at best. They might direct you through a busy intersection, but they wouldn't follow you home and park your car.

  Tom Robbins

  Home, Thinking, Car

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• You need Power, only when you want to do something harmful otherwise Love is enough to get everything done.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Love, Wicked World, Needs

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• Knowing you don't have much time left changes things. You get kind of philosophical. And you figure things out-more like, they figure themselves out-and everything gets real clear.

  Kami Garcia

  Real, Knowing, Kind

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• It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

  Seneca the Younger

  Time, Able, Violence

  "Personal quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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