Quotes About Philosophy

If all existence is a dialogue, how is it there is still so much left unsaid?

Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?' The Imass shrugged before replying. 'I think of futility, Adjunct.' 'Do all Imass think about futility?' 'No. Few think at all.' 'Why is that?' The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. 'Because Adjunct, it is futile.

Berns was vitally concerned about the philosophical ground of virtue in the individual, which was the necessary foundation of a decent regime. Jaffa was concerned with the philosophic ground of the regime, which he thought was the necessary foundation for individual virtue.

Halston had a sensible, straightforward philosophy of "find out what's wrong and let's fix it," according to Liza.

Bad books always lie. They lie most of all about the human condition.

It relied on measures of geometrical objects: lengths of lines, areas of squares, volumes of cubes. All of these they called magnitudes. They thought of them as distinct from numbers and superior to them. This, I believe, is why Archimedes held pi at arm's length. He didn't know what to make of it. It was a strange, transcendent creature, more exotic than any number.

Yet twenty-two trillion is nothing compared to the infinitude of digits that define the actual pi. Think of how philosophically disturbing this is.

They exist in some Platonic realm, along with abstract concepts like truth and justice.

Mathematically, circles embody change without change.

determinism does not imply predictability.

If real numbers are not real, why do mathematicians love them so much?

Actually, languages can be very tricky in this respect. The eminent linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin of Oxford once gave a lecture in which he asserted that there are many languages in which a double negative makes a positive but none in which a double positive makes a negative—to which the Columbia philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser, sitting in the audience, sarcastically replied, "Yeah, yeah.

Infinity lies at the heart of so many of our dreams and fears and unanswerable questions: How big is the universe? How long is forever? How powerful is God? In every branch of human thought, from religion and philosophy to science and mathematics, infinity has befuddled the world's finest minds for thousands of years. It has been banished, outlawed, and shunned. It's always been a dangerous idea.

The word is the atom of the mind

Zen is perhaps best known not so much for the negation of speech, which would represent an extreme view, but for inventing a creative new style of expression that uses language in unusual and ingenious fashions to surpass a reliance on everyday words and letters.

Because Zen overturns good versus evil on the ideal level, it loses sight of the significance of problems involving good versus evil in the real realm, which are not adequately addressed due to a shirking of responsibility and lack of remorse for transgressions.

The increased awareness of the new universe and the possibility of a biological universe largely dashed any remaining hopes for an anthropocentric universe with all that implies for religion and philosophy.

The key shortcoming of the multiverse theory, however, is that it appeals to something outside the universe, namely, a vast ensemble of other universes and a set of meta-laws that exist for no reason (e.g., quantum mechanics, string theory). In this respect, the multiverse theory is little better than a direct theistic explanation where an appeal is made to an external creator/designer.

Reality, truth, and knowledge are matters about which there is less consensus than one might hope.

The more we know about science, the more we know culture and cosmos are connected, to such an extent that we can now see that the cosmos is inextricably intertwined with human destiny, both in the short term and the long-term, impinging on (and arguably essential to) questions normally reserved for religion and philosophy.

There are some questions, after all, that we never get answers to. Some doors remain locked forever, and that's life.

opening lines of Ecclesiastes: "'Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.

Maybe God was a demon – that would explain much of the misery of earth life.

It is astounding that Google, whose corporate philosophy is 'don't be evil,' would enable evil by cooperating with China's censorship policies just to make a buck," he said in a press release. "… Many Chinese have suffered imprisonment and torture in the service of truth—and now Google is collaborating with their persecutors.