Quotes About Philosophy

Well," she remarked, "if I cannot have one, there is the other to be had." "There's my sensible poppy and my wise rose." "Or there is death.

It came to him to wonder, though only for a second, why the mercurial Mercurio kept about him such a symbol of order and changeless.

What gives you to suppose I have a soul?

Intellect itself had become paramount, and God simply the clue and excuse for its dreams.

the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin depends entirely on the dance.

I sell ideas. Actually, if you think about it, everything is really no more than idea. The past is nothing more than a memory, which is one kind of idea. The future is still a hope, another kind of idea. The present is fleeting and becomes a memory before you can put your hands on it. All ideas. I sell ideas.

Actually, if you think about it, everything is really no more than idea. The past is nothing more than a memory, which is one kind of idea. The future is still a hope, another kind of idea. The present is fleeting and becomes a memory before you can put your hands on it. All ideas.

We must not forget that the human soul, however independently created our philosophy represents it as being, is inseparable in its birth and in its growth from the universe into which it is born. - Teilhard de Chardin

Anything might have been anything else and had as much meaning to it.

Life is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

And it was about then, about that time, that I began to find life unsatisfactory as an explanation of itself and was forced to adopt the method of the artist of not explaining but putting the blocks together in some other way that seems more significant to him. Which is a rather fancy way of saying I started writing.

To a certain extent I am taking a leap of faith. I'm adding up the evidence on either side, and I'm seeing the evidence of there not being a God is overwhelming compared to the evidence for there being a God.

Theology in general seems to me a substitution of human ingenuity for divine wisdom.

La moral es una autoridad superior al derecho.

A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find someone who's forgotten words so I can have a word with him?8

Do the gods choose what is good because it is good, or is the good good because the gods choose it? If the first option is true, then the good is independent of the gods. But if the second option is true, then the very idea of what is good becomes arbitrary.

What matters is surely that life has a purpose for us, here and now. Whether this purpose was dreamed up by a creator or is assigned or invented by ourselves is not of paramount importance. If we can give life purpose and meaning, there is no obvious reason why this should be considered an inferior kind of meaning to that which could have been given by a creator.

Nunca será posible llegar solo mediante la razón pura a alguna verdad absoluta».5

Philosophy without criticism is like hunting deer without a shotgun, so, if you want people to like you, avoid robust philosophical debate.

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.

This line of reasoning would seem to lead to the absurd conclusion that the world is filled with noises no one hears, colours no one sees, flavours no one tastes, textures no one feels, as well as a host of other sense experience we cannot even imagine. For there is no end in which creatures might possibly perceive the world.

No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.' Seneca (c. 4 BCE to 65 AD)

We all have to make some basic assumptions that we cannot afford to doubt. Belief in our very sanity is in some sense a leap of faith.

What the rise of religions did was to give a name to a set of beliefs (atheism) that had always existed but which was considered so unexceptional that it required no special label.