Quotes About Philosophy

We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies.

If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness, a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness.

A "selfless," "disinterested" love is a contradiction in terms: it means that one is indifferent to that which one values.

But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.

What glory can there be in the conquest of a mindless body?

Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic—and only of addition at that?

Why do you write if you have nothing you want to say?" "To have something to do. Something more disgusting than many other things I could do. And more amusing.

This was the great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward of having felt everything one could feel.

Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

If a natural fact is neither just nor unjust, by what mental leap does it become a moral problem and an issue of justice? Why should those "favored by nature" be made to atone for what is not an injustice and is not of their making?

All work is an act of philosophy.

Reason is your means of survival — so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think..'.

The philosophers of the past were superficial," Dr. Pritchett went on. "It remained for our century to redefine the purpose of philosophy. The purpose of philosophy is not to help men find the meaning of life, but to prove to them that there isn't any.

what do I need philosophy for? My answer is: In order to be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems — i.e., in order to be able to live on earth.

Why did you decide to be an architect?" "I didn't know it then. But it's because I've never believed in God.

It is forbidden, not to be happy. For, as it has been explained to us, men are free and the earth belongs to them; and all things on earth belong to all men; and the will of all men together is good for all; and so all men must be happy. Yet

People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been—for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.

A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance.

There are no evil thoughts, Mr. Rearden," Francisco said softly, "except one: the refusal to think.

Only when you can feel contempt for your own priceless little ego, only then can you achieve the true, broad peace of selflessness, the merging of your spirit with the vast collective spirit of mankind. There is no room for the love of others within the tight, crowded miser's hole of a private ego.

The field of extrospection is based on two cardinal questions: "What do I know?" and "How do I know it?" In the field of introspection, the two guiding questions are: "What do I feel?" and "Why do I feel it?" Most

Many errors and tragic disillusionments are possible in this process of emotional recognition, since a sense of life, by itself, is not a reliable cognitive guide. And if there are degrees of evil, then one of the most evil consequences of mysticism—in terms of human suffering—is the belief that love is a matter of "the heart," not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy.

you'd give him a job he didn't deserve, precisely because he didn't deserve it—that would be true love and kindness and brotherhood. Else what's love for? If a man deserves a job, there's no virtue in giving it to him. Virtue is the giving of the undeserved.

I came here in order to bring up my sons as human beings. I would not surrender them to the educational systems devised to stunt a child's brain, to convince him that reason is impotent, that existence is an irrational chaos with which he's unable to deal, and thus reduce him to a state of chronic terror.