Philosophical Quotes - Page 31

• I would welcome the passing of the idea of philosophy as defined by a method of conceptual analysis. But that is not the passing of philosophy, and it leaves the philosopher with the task of grasping natures or essences (among other things).

  Robert Adams

  Philosophy, Essence, Ideas

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• People habituate themselves to let things pass through their minds, as one may speak, rather than to think of them. Thus by use they become satisfied merely with seeing what is said, without going any further. Review and attention, and even forming a judgment, becomes fatigue; and to lay anything before them that requires it, is putting them quite out of their way.

  Joseph Butler

  Thinking, People, Mind

  Joseph Butler (1816). “The Works of Joseph Butler ... To which is Prefixed, a Life of the Author”, p.6

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• The only secure knowledge is that I exist.

  Rene Descartes

  Secure

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• As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect.

  Richard Dawkins

  Fundamentalist Religion, Mind, Sap

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• The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Thinking, Momentum, Matter

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “Stillness Speaks”, p.14, New World Library

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• For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.

  Charles Simic

  Ideas, Seduction, Spirit

  Charles Simic (2013). “The Monster Loves His Labyrinth”, p.70, Copper Canyon Press

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• A man who discovers his pants are on fire tends to have very little time to worry about somebody else's box of matches

  Jeff Lindsay

  Men, Fire, Worry

  Jeff Lindsay (2005). “Dearly Devoted Dexter”, p.75, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• It was like wondering how evil had come into the world or what happens to a person after he dies: an interesting philosophical exercise, but also curiously pointless, since evil and death happened, regardless of the why and the how and what-it-meant.

  Joe Hill

  Exercise, Evil, Interesting

  Joe Hill (2010). “Horns”, p.62, Hachette UK

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• No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Taught, Sin

  Blaise Pascal (1962). “Pensées”

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• The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.

  Albert Camus

  Everyday, Important, Killing Yourself

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• Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.

  Voltaire

  Inspirational, Time, Men

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• Life's a freaking mess. In fact, I'm going to tell Sarah we need to start a new philosophical movement: messessentialism instead of existentialism: For those who revel in the essential mess that is life. Because Gram's right, there's not one truth ever, just a bunch of stories, all going on at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It's all a beautiful calamitous mess. It's like the day Mr. James took us into the woods and cried triumphantly, "That's it! That's it!" to the dizzying cacophony of soloing instruments trying to make music together. That is it.

  Jandy Nelson

  Beautiful, Heart, Trying

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• This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.

  Victor Hugo

  Heaven, Soul, Dawn

  Victor Hugo (1894). “The novels, complete and unabridged, of Victor Hugo”

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• Most people hew the battlements of life from compromise, erecting their impregnable keeps from judicious submissions, fabricating their philosophical drawbridges from emotional retractions and scalding marauders in the boiling oil of sour grapes.

  Zelda Fitzgerald

  Emotional, Oil, People

  Zelda Fitzgerald (2013). “Save Me the Waltz: A Novel”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• Scientific thought - indeed, any mode of thought, whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else - is just like the fashions that we wear - only much longer lived. It's a little like a boy band.

  Jasper Fforde

  Fashion, Religious, Boys

  Jasper Fforde (2003). “Lost in a Good Book”, Viking Adult

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• I don't like purely philosophical works. I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish." - Lara, from Doctor Zhivago

  Boris Pasternak

  Art, Philosophy, Thinking

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• Despite all philosophical differences, all major world religions have the same potential to create good human beings.

  Dalai Lama

  Inspirational, World Religions, Differences

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• If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Inspirational, Trying, Transformation

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1970). “Think on these things”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• The best things in life make you sweaty.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Life, Purpose, Puberty

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• What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

  Isaac Newton

  Littles, Way, Steps

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• By daily dying, I have come to be.

  Theodore Roethke

  Philosophy, Dying

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• The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Real, Zen Motorcycle Maintenance, Cycles

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values (ZAMM)". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.

  Ray Bradbury

  Thinking, Men, Zippers

  FaceBook post by Ray Bradbury from Dec 13, 2015

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• I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Sheep, Enlightenment, Goats

  J. M. Coetzee (2016). “The Lives of Animals: The Lives of Animals [Princeton Classics]”, p.22, Princeton University Press

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• If you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're gonna get an answer to some deep philosophical question...you may be wrong! It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature. But my interest in science is to simply find out about the world.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Character, Trying, Answers

  Richard P. Feynman (2015). “The Quotable Feynman”, p.115, Princeton University Press

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