Quotes About Philosophy

The spirit of our accurate and exact philosophy is outraged by conclusions that contradict each other so glaringly.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich st

Richard Dawkins may have phrased it most pungently when he argued that everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god—from Ra to Shiva—in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in.

If one must have faith in order to believe something, or believe in something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished.

Faith of that sort—the sort that can stand up at least for a while in a confrontation with reason—is now plainly impossible.

por qué iban «ellos» a molestarse con el tedio de la existencia humana, y menos aún con el del gobierno humano?

obrar siempre de manera que podamos convertir la máxima de nuestra conducta en ley universal».

Christopher Hitchens

I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.

Tertuliano de que cuanto mayor es la estupidez, más fuerte es la creencia en ella, que la fe alcanza su cota máxima cuando sus enseñanzas son menos asimilables por la razón.

The point is that Socrates was mocking his accusers in their own terms, saying in effect: I do not know for certain about death and the gods—but I am as certain as I can be that you do not know, either.

And do you think that unto such as you A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew God gave a secret, and denied it me? Well, well—what matters it? Believe that, too! —THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM (RICHARD LE GALLIENNE TRANSLATION)

Religion was our first attempt at philosophy, just as alchemy was our first attempt at chemistry and astrology our first attempt to make sense of the movements of the heavens.

If god really wanted people to be free of such thoughts, he should have taken more care to invent a different species.

Hegel said that history was the story of freedom becoming conscious of itself.

To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not? The

Christopher Hitchens

I know what's coming you see. I know no one beats these odds and I know it's a matter of getting used to that and realizing that you are expelled from your mother's uterus as if shot from a cannon towards a barn door studded with old nail files and rusty hooks. It's a matter of how you use up the intervening time in an intelligent and ironic way; and try not to do anything ghastly to your fellow creatures.

To believe in a god is in one way to express a willingness to believe in anything. Whereas to reject the belief is by no means to profess belief in nothing.

serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.

Is he willing to prevent evil but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

Karl Marx was rightest of all when he recommended continual doubt and self-criticism. Membership in the skeptical faction or tendency is not at all a soft option. The defense of science and reason is the great imperative of our time.

For those who find it remarkable that we live in a universe of Something, just wait. Nothingness is heading on a collision course right toward us.

The very best that can be said is that he uttered a string of fatuous non sequiturs. There is not even a strand of chewing gum to connect the premise to the conclusion;