Quotes About Philosophy

I had begun with the comforting conclusion that books are the tongue of divine wisdom, and had ended only with the thin hunch that all books are grand follies, destined forever to be misunderstood.

Rock to gravel to dust to mud to rock and so the world goes, as his mother used to say when he demanded reasons or explanation as to how the world got to be this way or that. The world is, she would say. It just is, boy.

My only idea ever, Dorrigo had confessed, is to advance forward and charge the windmill. Taylor had laughed, but Dorrigo had meant it. It's only our faith in illusions that makes life possible, Squizzy, he had explained, in as close to an explanation of himself as he ever offered. It's believing in reality that does us in every time. He

Suffering is not virtue, nor does it make virtue, nor does of it virtue necessarily flow.

You see, reason, gentlemen, is a fine thing, that is unquestionable, but reason is only reason and satisfies only man's reasoning capacity, while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life. Fyodor Dostoevsky

death poem of Hyakka

There was no meaning in it, not then and now now, but you can't write that, can you?

Thinking: The world is. It just is.

Some things can't be explained. They just are. And after a while they disappear, usually forever, or become interesting in another way. Literature's consolations are always temporary, while life is quick to begin again. It is better not even to look so hard, to leave off explaining. Nothing makes me more queasy than to spend time with people who don't know that and who can't forget, and for whom such knowledge isn't a cornerstone of life.

I thought that the difference between a successful life and an unsuccessful one, between me at that moment and all the people who owned the cars that were nosed-in to their proper places in the lot, maybe between me and that woman out in the trailers by the gold mine, was how well you were able to put things like this out of your mind and not be bothered by them, and maybe too, by how many troubles like this one you had to face in a lifetime.

Life is full of surprises, a wise man said, and would not be worth having if it were not.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying as a present to myself but haven't made much progress there—though I need to.

I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb signifies to be; to do; to suffer. I signify all three.

And I knew that was not a bad thing at all, not for anyone, in any life.

I believe in what you see being most of what there is, as I've taught my students, and that life's passed along to us empty. So, while significance weighs heavy, that's the most it does. Hidden meaning is all but absent.

Whatever race might be, it is certainly not logical or scientific.

Confucianism and Taoism were native to China, but its third religion, Buddhism, was an import from India.

The moral ascendancy of equality has made it difficult to use concepts such as virtue, excellence, beauty and – above all – truth.

There is absolutely no reasonable explanation for racial prejudice. It is all caused by unreasoning emotional reactions and these are gained in early childhood. Let the little child's mind be poisoned by prejudice of this kind and it is practically impossible to remove these impressions, however many years he may have of teaching by philosophers, religious leaders or patriotic citizens. If segregation is wrong, then the place to stop it is in the first grade and not in graduate colleges.

Yes, and Duchamp too, when he was asked what he thought about God, said, 'Let's not talk about that. That's man's stupidest idea.' — Nikša Gligo (1972)

It's not the answer that enlightens, but the question. EUGENE IONESCO

I don't believe in God, but I miss him.

Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.

The, at some point, sooner or later, for this reason or that, one of them is taken away. And what is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.