Quotes About Philosophy

Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient--it's not useful--to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it. [p. 69]

Tertullian said of Christian belief that it was true because it was impossible. Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.

It seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with illness or senility; a heroic one when faced with torture or the avoidable deaths of others; a glamourous one in the fury of dissappointed love (see: Great Literature).

What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.

Why should anything happen when everything has happened?

Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death.

I would have to go back into my past and deal with Adrian. My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided that any responsible, thinking individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for - and whose noble gesture re-emphasised with each passing decade the compromise and littleness that most lives consist of. 'Most lives': my life.

When we killed – or exiled – God, we also killed ourselves. Did we notice that sufficiently at the time? No God, no afterlife, no us. We were right to kill Him, of course, this long-standing imaginary friend of ours. And we weren't going to get an afterlife anyway. But we sawed off the branch we were sitting on. And the view from there, from that height – even if it was only the illusion of a view – wasn't so bad.

Martha was a clever girl, and therefore not a believer.

wear flannel next to your skin, and never believe in eternal punishment.

In love, everything is both true and false; it's the one subject on which it's impossible to say anything absurd.

He sometimes asked himself a question about life. Which are truer, the happy memories, or the unhappy ones? He decided, eventually, that the question was unanswerable.

My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided that any responsible, thinking individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for—and whose noble gesture reemphasised with each passing decade the compromise and littleness that most lives consist of. 'Most lives': my life.

It had seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with terminal illness or senility; a heroic one when faced with torture or the avoidable deaths of others; a glamorous one in the fury of disappointed love (see: Great Literature).

Well, in one sense, I can't know what it is that I don't know. That's philosophically self-evident.

The sadness of life. That was another conundrum he would occasionally ponder.

If I asked you "What is life?", you would probably reply, in so many words, that it is all just a coincidence

atheism, which is mere emptiness and too depressing for words, and leads to socialism.

This ought to have given him a whole storetank of existential rage, but somehow it didn't;

The one thing that is very good in life today is death.

Adrian, however, pushed us to believe in the application of thought to life, in the notion

Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? This

Vivimos en el tiempo —nos contiene y nos moldea—, pero nunca he creído comprenderlo muy bien.

Habíamos juzgado filosóficamente evidente que el suicidio era un derecho de cualquier persona libre: un acto lógico frente a una enfermedad terminal o la senilidad; una acción heroica frente a la tortura o la muerte evitable de otros; un acto elegante en la rabia del amor contrariado.