Quotes About Philosophy

by a prominent psychologist, Dr. Gordon Allport, and the Foreword to this new edition is written by a clergyman. We have come to recognize that this is a profoundly religious book. It insists that life is meaningful and that we must learn to see life as meaningful despite

al hombre se le puede arrebatar todo salvo una cosa: la última de las libertades humanas —?la elección de la actitud personal que debe adoptar frente al destino—? para decidir su propio camino.

When we set up pleasure as the whole meaning of life we insure that in the final analysis life shall inevitably seem meaningless. Pleasure cannot possibly lend meaning to life. For what is pleasure? A condition. The materialist–and hedonism is generally linked up with materialism–would even say pleasure is nothing but a state of the cells of the brain. And for the sake of inducing such a state, is it worth living, experiencing, suffering, and doing deeds?

Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt" (but everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find) reads the last sentence of the Ethics of Spinoza.

a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.

Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man's world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The

The destiny a person suffers therefore has a twofold meaning: to be shaped where possible, and to be endured where necessary.

For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: "Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?

There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

T]o ask the meaning of existence is meaningless in that existence precedes meaning. For the existence of meaning is assumed when we question the meaning of existence. Existence is, so to speak, the wall we are backed up against whenever we question it.

Long ago we had passed the stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naïve query which understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active creation of something of value. For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying.

The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.

Logos is deeper than logic.

haber sido es también una forma de ser, quizá la forma más segura de ser.

man is not he who poses the question, What is the meaning of life? but he who is asked this question, for it is life itself that poses it to him. And man has to answer to life by answering for life; he has to respond by being responsible; in other words, the response is necessarily a response-in-action.

He who knows the 'Why' for his existence is able to bear almost any 'How'.

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.

There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.

Las palabras de Nietzsche «quien tiene un porqué para vivir puede soportar casi cualquier cómo» podrían ser la motivación de todos los esfuerzos psicohigiénicos y psicoterapéuticos de los prisioneros.

Hay mucha sabiduría en las palabras de Nietzsche: «Quien tiene un porqué para vivir puede soportar casi cualquier cómo».

And I quoted from Nietzsche: Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker. (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.)

And what about man? Are you sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man's world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?