Quotes About Philosophy

We might state the argument by which [idealists] support their view in some such way as this: 'Whatever can be thought of is an idea in the mind of the person thinking of it; therefore nothing can be thought of except ideas in minds; therefore anything else is inconceivable, and what is inconceivable cannot exist.

I regard love as one of the most important things in human life, and I regard any system as bad which interferes unnecessarily with its free development.

I do not agree with Plato, but if anything could make me do so, it would be Aristotle's arguments against him.

Thus every principle of simplicity urges us to adopt the natural view, that there really are objects other than ourselves and our sense-data which have an existence not dependent upon our perceiving them.

The best we can do, according to Bradley, is to say things that are 'not intellectually corrigible'—further progress is only possible through a synthesis of thought and feeling, which, when achieved, will lead to our saying nothing. Ideas have degrees of truth, greater or less according to the stage at which they come in the dialectic.

There is a certain tendency in our practical age to consider that it does not much matter whether religious teaching is true or not, since the important question is whether it is useful.

Before we can profitably discuss whether we shall continue to exist after death, it is well to be clear as to the sense in which a man is the same person as he was yesterday.  

Zeno believed that there is no such thing as chance, and that the course of nature is rigidly determined by natural laws.

A filosofia, conforme entendo a palavra, é algo intermediário entre a teologia e a ciência. Como a teologia, consiste de especulações sobre assuntos a que o conhecimento exato não conseguiu até agora chegar, mas, como ciência, apela mais à razão humana do que à autoridade, seja esta a da tradição ou a da revelação.

These two sentences suffice to show, as I shall try to prove, that Bergson does not know what number is, and has himself no clear idea of it.

Although personal survival after death is an illusion, there is nevertheless something in the human mind that is eternal

all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are derived from nothing but custom; and that belief is more properly an act of the sensitive, than of the cogitative part of our natures.

Io non credo che la scienza per sé sia fonte adeguata di felicità, né credo che la mia mentalità scientifica abbia contribuito granché alla mia propria felicità. La scienza di per se stessa mi sembra neutra, essa, cioè, accresce il potere degli uomini per il bene come per il male. Una valutazione dello scopo della vita è cosa che va aggiunta alla scienza se si vuole che essa rechi felicità

Those who affirm positively that God exists cannot avoid falling into an impiety. For if they say that God controls everything, they make Him the author of evil things; if, on the other hand, they say that He controls some things only, or that He controls nothing, they are compelled to make God either grudging or impotent, and to do that is quite obviously an impiety.

The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty.

This seems plainly absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities. One

We can be sure, he [Kant] says, that anything we shall ever experience must show the characteristics affirmed of it in our a priori knowledge, because these characteristics are due to our own nature, and therefore nothing can ever come into our experience without acquiring these characteristics.

To such a man [without philosophy] the world tends to become definite, finite, and obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected.

For either death is a dreamless sleep—which is plainly good—or the soul migrates to another world.

If philosophy is to serve a positive purpose, it must not teach mere skepticism, for, while the dogmatist is harmful, the skeptic is useless. Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance.

In such a life [of private interests] there is something feverish and confined, in comparison with which the philosophic life is calm and free.

Philosophic contemplation does not, in its widest survey, divide the universe into two hostile camps -- friends and foes, helpful and hostile, good and bad -- it views the whole impartially.

Creo que esta infelicidad se debe en muy gran medida a conceptos del mundo erróneos, a éticas erróneas, a hábitos de vida erróneos, que conducen a la destrucción de ese entusiasmo natural, ese apetito de cosas posibles del que depende toda felicidad, tanto la de las personas como la de los animales.

In one sense it must be admitted that we can never prove the existence of things other than ourselves and our experiences. No logical absurdity results from the hypothesis that the world consists of myself and my thoughts and feelings and sensations, and that everything else is mere fancy.