Quotes About Philosophy

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.

Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

Marxism is essentially a product of the bourgeois mind.

In places like universities, where everyone talks too rationally, it is necessary for a kind of enchanter to appear.

The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.

An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.

This kind of art school is for me the least important. A spiritual structure is needed. If a person is an artist he can use the most primitive of instruments:- a broken knife is enough. Otherwise it remains a craft school.

God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.

In my lifetime I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; thanks to Montesquieu, I even know that one can be Persian. But as for man, I declare that I have never in my life met him; if he exists, he exists unknown to me.

The philosophy of Plato, which is the human preface of the Gospel [. . .]

But if everything's already decided, then what's the point of living?

Rather than adjust his expectations in the face of disappointment, he (Jefferson) tended to bury them deeper inside himself and regard the disjunction between his ideals and the worldly imperfections as the world's problems rather than his own.

I should prefer to die laughing, and, on more than one occasion, thought I might.

Mikhailovsky

Thomas Aquinas is but Aristotle sainted.

'Mongst all these stirs of discontented strife,O, let me lead an academic life;To know much, and to think for nothing, knowNothing to have, yet think we have enow.

One of the downsides of working in philosophy is that it attracts a lot of people with mental-health problems.

The question is, if we already know what the right and the wrong answers are to moral questions, prior to the formulation of an abstract principle, what is the point of formulating the principle?

Here the rule-utilitarian believes that the only justifiable rules are ones that will promote the greatest happiness, when generally adhered to in a deontic fashion. Thus the rule-utilitarian rejects "deontology" as a theory of moral justification, but accepts deontic constraints as an essential element of moral action.

Jefferson appeared to his enemies as an American version of Candide; Hamilton as an American Machiavelli.

God was not in the details for Jefferson; he was in the sky and stars.

The style is the thought itself.