Quotes About Philosophy

As William Edgar has pointed out, Schaeffer's favorite method in apologetics (pushing an unbeliever to the extreme of his or her own presuppositions to show how dark the world is without Christ) was "very similar, if not identical" to Van Til's idea of placing yourself on your opponent's ground for the sake of argument.

While only a small number of people wrestled with the philosophical problems that Schaeffer faced, by the 1960s the majority of young people wrestled with the question of authority.

He believed that the non-Christian enjoys a false optimism by living partly on the basis of Christian presuppositions. Schaeffer aimed to destroy that by pushing the person toward the despair and darkness to which his or her non-Christian presuppositions logically led.

A mathematician once told me that there are really only four numbers in the world: one, two, three, and many.

Scientists need to be observed and criticized more than any other members of society. I say this not just because of the horrors that might emerge from their laboratories, but also because of the necessity for making them as morally and philosophically answerable as the rest of us.

Education can be glorious. At its best, to quote Roman philosopher Lucretius, it is a "voyage in mind throughout infinity.

Analytic philosophy is an intellectual pastime for people who are clever but do not want to think seriously.

These passages don't just lay out a cyclic view of history, they specify a philosophy of history that explains those cycles. The founder of a dynasty is given a mandate (mìng ) to rule by Heaven (ti?n ).

If reading the Bible intently and seriously gives breadth and depth to one's mind (and it certainly does), why not also the Mengzi? or the Bhagavad Gita? or Ch?shingura? There is more than one "great conversation" in the world, and more than one way to furnish a soul.

would that turtle rather have its bones treasured in death, or be alive dragging its tail in the mud? … Go! I'll keep my tail in the mud, too" (247). So Zhuangzi recommends that we do not seek prominence.

The real battlefield is the realm of ideas.

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

Shooting people to keep them from dying had logical flaws obvious to everyone.

Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.

And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker.

The mind does not exist unless leagued with the soul

In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling...

In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad...How can'st thou endure without being mad?

Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket;

The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it.

So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat.

and while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.

Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.

Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them.