Quotes About Philosophy

learned a long time ago, if you're going to wait for this world to be fair, you're going to be waiting in the grave.

There's no universal tally of good and evil, balancing right and wrong. The Christians with their God-has-a-plan fantasy, the Hindus with their karmic balance . . . it's all wishful thinking. Primitive religious impulse. Linus's damned security blanket.

God is merely a part of the human brain, an evolutionary coping mechanism that developed to make bearable our awareness of our own deaths. When

Hannah Arendt had it right: evil is incomprehensibly banal. The existentialists went her one better: it's also absurd, and terrifyingly so.

Wonder is my people attributing the creation of the universe to an act of dismemberment. It is avoiding true mystery through fantasy. And if the universe refuses to conform to your fantasy does it cease to be wonderful That is conceit of the highest order. Nen Yim

Enlightened self-interest" was how Solo himself had described it.

The open view of the future is the most plausible view because it squares with our everyday life. Whatever philosophy we might embrace, we all live as though the open view were true. With every decision we make we assume that much of our immediate future is settled (e.g., we take for granted the ongoing reality of our world and the laws of physics) but that some of it is up to us to decide. The open view simply says that this common-sense assumption is accurate. Responding

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I think it applies to faith as well. The unexamined faith is not worth believing.

The very fact that what God creates is less than Himself introduces limitations and imperfections into the picture.

Immortality is an aim, not a fact.

the land of ideas, you are always renting.

Scientists require apparatus, but mathists splendidly require only writing tools and erasers. Better, philosophers do not even need erasers

he had never understood why it was better to kill plants than animals.

I intend to live forever. So far, so good. —STEVEN WRIGHT

But then, why did the mechs have no religion?

It's a hard man who's only just, and a sad man who's only wise.

To Memor philosophy was like a blind being searching a dark room for an unknown, black beast. When philosophy verged into theology, it was like the same predicament, but the black beast did not even exist.

The Big Questions only have small answers, and the Big Answers can only be found through small questions.

I said that the truth is found more often in music,' he repeated, 'than it is in books of philosophy

Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?

Anarchists...' I began and then faltered. 'No political philosophy I ever heard of loves the human race as much as anarchism. Every other way of looking at the world says that people have to be controlled, and ordered around, and governed. Only the anarchists trust human beings enough to let them work it out for themselves. And I used to be that optimistic once. I used to believe and think like that. But I don't, any more. So, no--I guess I'm not an anarchist now.

It's a very sad thing, to be in no hurry, and I would not be so free in admitting it, if I were you,' he said, still staring at the bottle. When he wasn't smiling his face looked flabby, slack, and pallid grey. He was unwell, but it was the kind of unwell you have to work at. 'We have saying in Marseilles: a man in no hurry gets nowhere fast. I have been in no hurry for eight years.

I want everything,' she replied with a faint, wry smile. 'You know I said that once, to a friend of mine, and he told me that the real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it.

God is impossible. That is the first proof that He exists.