Quotes About Philosophy

Spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom.

To know how to deal with the present and to guard against worry and fear--that is true wisdom and the ultimate aim of philosophy.

In the pursuit of truth we must beware of being misled by terms which we do not rightly understand. That is the chief point. Almost all philosophers utter the caution; few observe it.

I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.

The question between the materialists and me is not, whether things have a real existence out of the mind of this or that person, but whether they have an absolute existence, distinct from being perceived by God, and exterior to all minds.

Doth the reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?

we don't live in Plato's Commonwealth, and when we can't have perfection we ought to comply with the measure that is least remote from it.

Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.

For the one belief we all carry with us, no matter how rational we claim to be, is a belief in our own free will.

Without falling into sociopolitical reductionism, it remains necessary to protest against the prevailing tendency, among Western scholars, to read the works of Nishida [Kitar?] and the Kyoto school as expressions of a "pure philosophy" stemming from a "pure experience.

Nishida has been sharply criticized after the war for lending his support to the imperial (ist) ideology of the Japanese government, but these criticisms have not led—as in Heidegger's case—to a thorough questioning of his philosophy.

Their common interest in Western mystics like Meister Eckhart led both Nishida and Suzuki to misrepresent Christianity as some kind of inferior version of Mahayäna Buddhism, thus reversing the old schemas applied to the East by Westerners.

To demand the absolute and to be content with absolutely nothing else results in a skepticism.

What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.

Would you say you have a "philosophy" Of your own? If so what is it?' 'If I have it's all skin and bones...If I have any philosophy...it's that life could be better than it is.

private vice can be publicly beneficial

I am neither happy nor sad, neither really tense nor really relaxed. Perhaps that is the way it is when a man gazes at the stars, asking himself questions he is not mature enough to answer. So one day he is happy, the next a bit sad without knowing why. It is a little like the horizon: for all your distinctly seeing sky and sea come together on the same line, for all your constantly making for it, the horizon stays at the same distance, right at hand and out of reach.

1 + 1 = 3 (du moins, je l'espère de tout mon coeur)

Ämblike filosoofia esimene õpetus: Pole olemas paremat võistlustehnikat kui ootamine, kuni su vastane enda ise hävitab...

Tähtis pole mitte veenda, vaid mõtlema panna.

Tout est en un (Abraham) Tout est amour (Jésus-Christ) Tout est économique (Karl Marx) Tout est sexuel (Sigmund Freud) Tout est relatif (Albert Einstein) Et ensuite ?

People who say, 'Let the chips fall where they may,' usually figure they will not be hit by a chip.

Utilitarians are often immensely conscientious people, who work for humanity and give up meat for the sake of the animals. They think this is what they morally ought to do and feel guilty if they do not live up to their own standard. They do not, and perhaps could not, ask: How useful is it that I think and feel like this?

Disagreement does not necessarily have to be overcome. It may remain an important and constitutive feature of our relations to others