Quotes About Philosophy

It seems as if it were only through an experience of symbolic reality that man, vainly seeking his own "existence" and making a philosophy out of it, can find his way back to a world in which he is no longer a stranger.

Bilinci ne kadar geniÅŸlemiÅŸ ve farkl?laÅŸm??sa, ahlaki yap?s? o denli geri kalm??t?r. Ä°ÅŸte bugün önümüzdeki sorun budur. Ak?l tek ba??na yeterli deÄŸildir.

Nothing is more vulnerable and ephemeral than scientific theories, which are mere tools and not everlasting truths.

St. Thomas himself recalls the saying of Aristotle that "the thing is the whiter, the less it is mixed with black,"45 without mentioning, however, that the reverse proposition: "the thing is the blacker, the less it is mixed with white," not only has the same validity as the first but is also its logical equivalent. He might also have mentioned that not only darkness is known through light, but that, conversely, light is known through darkness.

From time immemorial, men have had ideas about a Supreme Being (one or several) and about the Land of the Hereafter. Only modern man thinks he can do without them.

As an introvert he had a better relation to ideas than to things.

Woe unto you, for you have substituted the oneness of god for the diversity which cannot be resolved into the one.

It must not be forgotten that it is just in the imagination that a man's highest value may lie.

Eine große Wahrheit ist eine Wahrheit, deren Gegenteil immer noch eine Wahrheit ist." ---- "La verdad suprema es una y la misma con lo contrario al sentido.

Even the most carefully defined philosophical or mathematical concept, which we are sure does not contain more than we put into it, is nevertheless more than we assume. It is a psychic event and as such partly unknowable. The very numbers you use in counting are more than you take them to be. They are at the same time mythological elements (for the Pythagoreans, they were even divine); but you are certainly unaware of this when you use numbers for practical purpose.

I early arrived at the insight that when no answer comes from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean very little.

The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question...

That the highest summit of life can be expressed through the symbolism of death is a well-known fact, for any growing beyond oneself means death.

Mircea Eliade stated that for yoga and S?khya philosophy to which it is related, in contrast to other Indian schools of thought, "the world is real (not illusory—as it is, for example, for Ved?nta). Nevertheless, if the world exists and endures, it is because of the 'ignorance' of spirit."16 What distinguishes yoga is its essentially practical cast.

La verdad suprema es una y la misma con lo contrario al sentido.

It's erroneous to believe that religions differ in their innermost essence. Strictly speaking, it's always one and the same religion. Every subsequent form of religion is the meaning of the antecedent.

Life has addressed a question to me... or conversely, I myself am a question.

Man today is painfully aware of the fact that neither his great religions nor his various philosophies seem to provide him with those powerful animating ideas that would give him the security he needs in face of the present condition of the world.

Where Voegelin seeks to show the Gnostic nature of modernity, Jonas seeks to show the modern nature of Gnosticism. Jonas draws parallels between ancient Gnosticism and modern, secular existentialism to prove that Gnosticism is existentialist, not that existentialism is Gnostic. For Jonas, both philosophies stress above all the radical alienation of human beings from the world.

So if I say God is good, it is not true: I am good, God is not good. I go further: I am better than God! For only what is good can become better, and only what is better can become the best. God is not good, therefore he cannot become better; and since he cannot become better he cannot become the best. These three: good, better, best, are infinitely remote from God, who is above all.

Before him exist neither question nor answer.

Esto le llevó a concluir que «con el paso de los siglos, Occidente producirá su propio yoga, y será sobre las bases establecidas por el cristianismo»51

Or, in the intriguing words of existential philosopher Gabriel Marcel, hope is "a piercing through time … a kind of memory of the future.

Christopher didn't understand that there was a fine line between seeking death and being indifferent to its occurrence.