Quotes About Philosophy

Philosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines

It is naturally difficult, if one denies the existence of the second theatre, to elucidate what is meant by describing the episodes which are supposed to take place in it as self-intimating. But some points are clear enough. It is not supposed that when I am wondering, say, what is the answer to a puzzle and am ipso facto consciously doing so, that I am synchronously performing two acts of attention, one to the puzzle and the other to my wondering about it.

The connection between volitions and movements is allowed to be mysterious, so, for all he knows, his volition may have had some other movement as its effect and the pulling of the trigger may have had some other event for its cause.

So what of volitions themselves? Are they voluntary or involuntary acts of mind? Clearly either answer leads to absurdities.

According to the legend, whenever an agent does anything intelligently, his act is preceded and steered by another internal act of considering a regulative proposition appropriate to his practical problem. But what makes him consider the one maxim which is appropriate rather than any of the thousands which are not?

He applies in his practice what Aristotle abstracted in his theory of such practices.

le persan Al-Sadjâssi, écrivait il y'a des siècles: Quand la sagesse est descendue des étages du ciel vers le centre de la terre, elle s'est établie en quatre gîtes et s'est installée en quatre demeures: dans le cerveau des grecs, sur la langue des arabes, dans la main des chinois et dans le cœur des perses.

Ne pas te soucier de l'avenir, et croire en la Fortune. Telles sont les vérités. Les battants du destin sauront toujours s'écarter pour toi, le jour venu, à l'heure propice. Et puisque le bonheur n'est pas éternel, pourquoi le chagrin et le malheur le seraient-ils?

A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.

Bring something incomprehensible into the world!

Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.

The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?

It is not the slumber of reason that engenders monsters, but vigilant and insomniac rationality.

The shame of being a man - is there any better reason to write?

Philosophy, art, and science are not the mental objects of an objectified brain but the three aspects under which the brain becomes subject.

An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.

To affirm is not to bear, carry, or harness oneself to that which exists, but on the contrary to unburden, unharness, and set free that which lives.

Aristotle wrote that metaphor is the hallmark of genius.

Is that the ultimate paradox of life, she wondered, that the universe should become less clear with age?

Burton and his ilk also had a distinctive philosophy: they believed that science showed that Europeans and Americans were biologically, mentally, and socially superior to others. "The savage is morally and mentally an unfit instrument for the spread of civilization except when, like the higher mammalia, he is reduced to a state of slavery," wrote August Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers,

You can puzzle over lines all your life and never be satisfied with the meanings you get.

Vi la muerte y no me gustó. ¿Qué sentiré si me muero? - No sentirás nada. Ese es el problema precisamente. Nunca sentirás nada. La muerte es de una simplicidad terrible -sonrió la serpiente.

Quizás esté mal, Eva, pero el Mal también es parte del conocimiento.

Más terrible que morir es no saber para qué se vive.