Quotes About Philosophy

rational metaphysics teaches that man becomes all things by understanding them ... imaginative metaphysics shows that man becomes all things by not understanding them ... for when he does not understand he makes the things out of himself and becomes them by transforming himself into them.

Insomma, da tutto ciò che si è in quest'opera ragionato, è da finalmente conchiudersi che questa scienza porta indivisibilmente seco lo studio della pietà, e che, se non siesi pio, non si può daddovero esser saggio, SN 1112

Jamás existió en el mundo nación de ateos, pues empezaron todas con alguna religión, y las religiones, sin salvedad, echaron su raigambre en aquel deseo, naturalmente común a los hombres, de vivir eternamente: y este universal deseo de la naturaleza humana nace de un común sentido, celado en la hondura de la mente humana, según el cual los ánimos de los hombres son inmortales.

Sin religión alguna de una Divinidad, jamás los hombres en nación se concertaron; y así comode cosas físicas, o sea de los movimientos de los cuerpos, no cabeciencia segura sin la guía de las verdades abstractas de la matemática, así no cabe en las cosas morales sin el aprecio de las verdades abstractas de la metafísica, y por tanto sin la demostración de Dios.

Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of mathematicians, which has changed little from Pythagoras to our day.

Thanks to God, I'm an atheist.

Forse questa è filosofia a buon mercato, ma io credo che certi lavori dovrebbero essere fatti da quelli che non si sentono adatti [...]. Sentirsi un po' fuori posto aiuta, rende più vigili.

Pensai alla frase più precisa che abbia mia letto sul concetto di felicità. Era di Prévert - o forse di Proust? - e faceva più o meno così: "Ho riconosciuto la felicità dal rumore che ha fatto andandosene." Mi chiesi se anche questa fosse melensa, solo più adatta alla mia indole. Non risposi alla domanda. Non lo faccio quasi mai.

We "need" cancer because, by the very fact of its incurability, it makes all other diseases, however virulent, not cancer.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.

Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

A man cannot be wise enough to be a great artist without being wise enough to wish to be a philosopher. A man cannot have the energy to produce good art without having the energy to wish to pass beyond it. A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.

If there were no God, there would be no atheists.

Dogmatism does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found it without it.

Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely, a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man.

Knowing how to apply maxims cannot be reduced to, or derived from, the acceptance of those or any other maxims.

Nor does this understanding require a prolonged grounding in the not yet established laws of psychology.

For the reason, or maxim, is inevitably a proposition of some generality. It cannot embody specifications to fit every detail of the particular state of affairs.

To do something thinking what one is doing is, according to this legend, always to do two things; namely, to consider certain appropriate propositions, or prescriptions, and to put into practice what these propositions or prescriptions enjoin.

Moreover both this constant awareness (generally called 'consciousness'), and this non-sensuous inner perception (generally called 'introspection') have been supposed to be exempt from error.

It is a subsidiary question how you conduct your imaginings, including your imagined monologues.