Philosophical Quotes - Page 30

• The past is past, and the future is yet to come. That means the future is in your hands - the future entirely depends on the present. That realization gives you a great responsibility.

  Dalai Lama

  Mean, Responsibility, Past

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• Wisest is he who knows what he does not know.

  Plato

  Doe, Tao, Knows

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• [T]here is a methodological bias in favor of taking natural discourse literally, other things being equal. For example, unless there are clear reasons for construing discourse as ambiguous, elliptical, or involving special idioms, we should not so construe it.

  Tyler Burge

  Special, Favors, Example

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• A state arises,as I conceive,out of the needs of mankind;no one is self-sufficing,but all of us have many wants

  Plato

  Self, Needs, Want

  Plato (1873). “The Dialogues of Plato”, p.190

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• Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

  Plato

  Life, Wise, Wisdom

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• Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

  Plato

  Age, Action, Virtue

  Plato (2010). “The Works of Plato: The Trial and Death of Socrates”, p.13, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Man never legislates,but destinies and accidents,happening in all sorts of ways,legislate in all sorts of ways.

  Plato

  Destiny, Men, Way

  Plato (1872). “Laws. Appendix: Lesser Hippias. First Alcibiades. Menexenus. Index of persons and places”, p.236

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• To be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

  Plato

  Greatest Victory, Shameful, All Things

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• No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

  Plato

  Law, Understanding, Ordinances

  Plato (1926). “Laws”

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• The learning and knowledge that we have,is,at the most,but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

  Plato

  Inspirational, Knowledge, Ignorant

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

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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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• 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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• There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it, and since, in art, the way of saying a thing becomes a part of what is said, every work of art is unique and requires fresh attention.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Art, Unique, Way

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.76, Macmillan

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• One or another man, liberated or cursed, suddenly sees-but even this man sees rarely-that all we are is what we aren't, that we fool ourselves about what's true and are wrong about what we conclude is right. And this man, who in a flash sees the universe naked, creates a philosophy or dreams up a religion; and the philosophy spreads and the religion propagates, and those who believe in the philosophy begin to wear it as a suit they don't see, and those who believe in the religion put it on as a mask they soon forget.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Philosophy, Believe

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p. 255, 1982.

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• If true, the Pythagorean principles as to abstain from flesh, foster innocence; if ill-founded they at least teach us frugality, and what loss have you in losing your cruelty? It merely deprives you of the food of lions and vultures...let us ask what is best - not what is customary. Let us love temperance - let us be just - let us refrain from bloodshed.

  Seneca the Younger

  Loss, Animal, Principles

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• If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax

  Plutarch

  Animal, Vegetarianism, Want

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• Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit.

  Plutarch

  Animal, Flesh, Eating

  Plutarch (1957). “Plutarch's Moralia: Concerning the face which appears in the orb of the moon. On the principle of cold. Whether fire or water is more useful. Whether land or sea animals are cleverer. Beasts are rational. On the earing of flesh”

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• There is no difference between the pain of humans and the pain of other living beings, since the love and tenderness of the mother for the young are not produced by reasoning, but by feeling, and this faculty exists not only in humans but in most living beings.

  Maimonides

  Mother, Pain, Animal

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• cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened.

  Immanuel Kant

  Animal, Men, Feelings

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• I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Animal, Men, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (1960). “H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal”, p.24, Courier Corporation

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• Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food

  Henry David Thoreau

  Animal, Men, Vegetarianism

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.131, Graphic Arts Books

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• To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will-to-life. At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life as his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental principle of the moral, and it is a necessity of thought.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Thinking, Animal, Men

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• It is very significant that some of the most thoughtful and cultured men are partisans of a pure vegetable diet

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Animal, Thoughtful, Men

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “The Health Guide”

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• I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Spiritual, Animal, Vegetarian Diet

  Mahatma Gandhi (1959). “India of My Dreams”, p.151, Rajpal & Sons

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• It is necessary to correct the error that vegetarianism has made us weak in mind, or passive or inert in action. I do not regard flesh-food as necessary at any stage

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Animal, Errors, Vegetarianism

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