Quotes About Philosophy

Descartes useless and unnecessary.

Porque, al fin, ¿qué es el hombre en la naturaleza? Una nada frente al infinito, un todo frente a la nada, un medio entre nada y todo. Infinitamente alejado de comprender los extremos, el fin de las cosas y su principio están para él invenciblemente ocultos en un secreto impenetrable, igualmente incapaz de ver la nada de donde ha salido y el infinito donde es absorbido.

Tout notre raisonnement se réduit à céder au sentiment

I do not know whether God exists, but I know that I have nothing to gain from being an atheist if he does not exist, whereas I have plenty to lose if he does. Hence, this justifies my belief in God.

Truth is not an object to be possessed; it is a living thing recognized, cultivated by the mind and heart.

What then is man to do in this state of affairs? Is he to doubt everything, to doubt if he is awake, whether he is being pinched or burned? Is he to doubt whether he is doubting, to doubt whether he exists? No one can go that far, and I maintain that a perfectly genuine sceptic has never existed.

Omul este asa de mare, încât maretia lui reiese si din aceea ca el se stie nenorocit.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

For a religion to be true it must have known our nature; it must have known its greatness and smallness, and the reason for both. What other religion but Christianity has known this?

It may be that there are such things as true proofs, but it is not certain.

to think well; this is the principle of morality.

It is not possible to have reasonable grounds for not believing in miracles.

Multiplicity which is not reduced to unity is confusion. Unity which does not depend on multiplicity is tyranny.

Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety. (Page 1)

We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. (Page 10)

Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical. If

167] Submission and use of reason; that is what makes true Christianity.

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars.

The Jesuits have tried to combine God and the world, and have only earned the contempt of God and the world.

Merely according to reason, nothing is just in itself, everything shifts with time. Custom is the whole of equity for the sole reason that it is accepted.

Nothing is so conformable to reason as to disavow reason.

71 Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

Les hommes ont mépris pour la religion. Ils en ont haine et peur qu'elle soit vraie. Pour guérir cela il faut commencer par montrer que la religion n'est point contraire à la raison. Vénérable, en donner respect. La rendre ensuite aimable, faire souhaiter aux bons qu'elle fut vraie et puis montrer qu'elle est vraie. Vénérable parce qu'elle a bien connu l'homme. Aimable parce qu'elle promet le vrai bien.

38] Too much and too little wine. Do not give him any, he cannot find the truth. Give him too much; the same thing.