Quotes About Philosophy

Making peace with suffering shows we have no imagination and little spiritual purpose.

But according to Buddhist philosophy, self-identity, the "I," is a creation of the mind; we create self-identity because it's convenient and useful in certain ways. We must use self-identity to live responsibly in society, but we should realize that it is merely a tool, a symbol, a sign, or a concept. Because it enables us to think and discriminate, self-identity allows us to live and function.

If rebirth exists, that is all right: I will simply try to continue practicing everything good and refrain from everything bad through my next life. If there is no rebirth, I will have nothing to do after my death and I will have no need to consider my practice. This was my view of rebirth for most of my life as a Buddhist.

A wise word is not a substitute for a piece of herring.

First of all, I'm over sixty. And second of all, I'm the sort of fellow to whom life and death are the same.

No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea.

After some years we will die. If we just think that it is the end of our life, this will be the wrong understanding. But, on the other hand, if we think that we do not die, this is also wrong. We die, and we do not die. This is the right understanding.

TRANSIENCY    ââ'¬Å"We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence.

It doesn't matter," she said. "Life is full of stupid things and sometimes we just have to do them.

Wisdom is a kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of the nature, career, and consequences of human values.

I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

He does not believe that does not live according to his belief.

Here is what I learned: Simone Weil was right. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.

One cannot escape dogmas—those who hold most firmly to dogmas today are those whose only dogma is that dogmas should be feared like the plague.

He reflected that what is important is not things, but the meaning we give to things. Sooner or later death comes for everyone. More important than putting off death, is giving it a meaning.

L'importante non sono le cose, ma il senso che noi diamo alle cose. Prima o poi la morte attende tutti. Più importante del rimandare la morte è darle un senso.

Think, two things on their own and both at once.

But it is logically impossible that there could exist an 'unowned' dent, a dent without a surface that is dented.

We think about what to do, and muster considerations and arguments in favor of one course or another. How are we to think about that?

Finding a mechanism does not bypass the problem of induction.

People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life throws up.

the unexamined life is not worth living. It has insisted on the power of rational reflection to winnow out bad elements in our practices, and to replace them with better ones.

So the middle-ground answer reminds us that reflection is continuous with practice, and our practice can go worse or better according to the value of our reflections.

A system of thought is something we live in, just as much as a house, and if our intellectual house is cramped and confined, we need to know what better structures are possible. The