Quotes About Philosophy

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.

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.

There are only three big questions?' I asked, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice. 'Yes,' he answered equably. 'Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Those are the three big questions. And if you love him, Lin, my young friend, if you love him, he will tell you these secrets, as well.

of course, naturally, God is impossible. That is the first proof that He exists.

Every guru you meet and every teacher, every prophet and every philosopher, should answer these two questions for you: What is an objective, universally acceptable definition of good and evil? And, What is the relationship between consciousness and matter? If he cannot answer these two questions, as I have done, you know that he has not passed the test.

the scrambled fighting and courteous deference were both expressions of the one philosophy: the doctrine of necessity. The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example, was no less and no more than the amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards.

We need both Socrates and Aristotle in the search for knowledge, but in education today there is too much Aristotle and too little Socrates.

Most people spend a good deal of energy denying that one day they will die. The common perception is that time flows forward from birth and ends with a huge question mark at death—a view that makes life meaningless and absurd. But this is a mistake. I believe it was the philosopher Martin Heidegger who asserted that time flows backward from death giving life its meaning. Death clarifies.

Time travel may be achieved one day, or it may not. But if it is, it should not require any fundamental change in world-view, at least for those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book.

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?

You know, frankly speaking, money just doesn't figure largely in my world view.

Our thoughts do not actually exist; they are only pictures. A great error was made at the end of the last human developmental period when existence was equated with thinking. 'Cogito ergo sum' is the greatest error ever placed at the head of the modern world view.

I wasn't looking for religion; I was looking for a world view.

To become a stoic is to endorse the truthfulness of its world view and accept its prescription for how you ought to live, not just to like how it makes you feel.

French existentialism is an unhelpful philosophy in which to couch modern feminism: born from the ravages of the Second World War, it is a cynical, individualistic school of thought that posits the self and personal choice as the measure of life's entire meaning.

Winston Churchill inspired my leadership philosophy. I've read a huge number of his writings, especially his diaries from the Second World War. His thoughts on leadership and duty have helped me as England captain.

However, while the Nazi barbarians and their collaborators threatened the entire world, I could not accept his philosophy and, after several earlier attempts, was finally accepted into the Canadian Infantry Corps during the last year of World War II.

Barack Obama is not Harry Truman, who dropped the A-bomb on Japan to stop World War II. Barack Obama is not John F. Kennedy, who lowered marginal tax rates to get economic growth and job creation. Barack Obama and the far left, they are a completely different ball of wax.

Chinese learning is an internal learning, but Western learning is an external one; Chinese learning is for the cultivation of oneself, just as Western learning is for the handling of worldly affairs.

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

There are two worlds we live in: a material world, bound by the laws of physics, and the world inside our mind, which is just as important.

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal's 'Pensees' and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.'

Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire - in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?