Quotes About Philosophy

The idea, I decided, is not to think. But how do you stop thinking? Why was I chosen to polish this rail? Why couldn't I be inside writing editorials about municipal corruption? Well, it could be worse. I could be in China working a rice paddy.

Now I'm thinking that dying is such a strange and ordinary thing.

Cut short by Cortés, Mexica philosophy did not have the chance to reach as far as Greek or Chinese philosophy. But surviving testimony intimates that it was well on its way. The stacks of Nahuatl manuscripts in Mexican archives depict the tlamatinime meeting to exchange ideas and gossip, as did the Vienna Circle and the French philosophes and the Taisho-period Kyoto school.

Through art alone, the Mexica said, can human beings approach the real. Cut short by Cortés, Mexica philosophy did not have the chance to reach as far as Greek or Chinese philosophy. But surviving testimony intimates that it was well on its way.

The belief that human life will continue, even if we ourselves die, is one of the underpinnings of society.

We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.

Origin of man now proved.—Metaphysics must flourish.—He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.

The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.

To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in both.—Bacon: Advancement of Learning.

Whilst Man, however well-behaved, At best is but a monkey shaved!

Origin of man now proved. Metaphysics must flourish. He who understand baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.

Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle.

He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than John Locke.

He [Erasmus Darwin] used to say that 'unitarianism was a feather-bed to catch a falling Christian.

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.

As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.

But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

method of thinking.

Those teachings had been burned away. But he could not abide by a universe composed only of what he could see, especially when it was so frequently foul.

every act, object and statement that man perceives is meaningful (even "nothing") and […] the frontiers of meaning are always, momentarily, in state of collapse and paradox.

You philosophers, however raised above your own bodies you may be, must really not forget we poor worldlings have bones to be broken.

Pythagoras concluded that ratios govern not only music but also all other types of beauty. To the Pythagoreans, ratios and proportions controlled musical beauty, physical beauty, and mathematical beauty. Understanding nature was as simple as understanding the mathematics of proportions.

The number-shape duality in Greek numbers made it easy; after all, zero didn't

In Cantor's mind there were an infinite number of infinities-the transfinite numbers-each nested in the other. Aleph 0 is smaller than Aleph 1, which is smaller than Aleph 2, which is smaller than Aleph 3, and so forth. At the top of the chain sits the ultimate infinity that engulfs all other infinities: God, the infinity that defies all comprehension.