Quotes About Philosophy

There used to be a time - it isn't so much the case now - that vegetarianism was some kind of religion, and either you belong or you don't belong.

To be at ease is better than to be at business. Nothing really belongs to us but time, which even he has who has nothing else.

I don't want to know what time it is. I don't want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters.

I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.

I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality. I couldn't resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink (…) That was a very different thing from wanting to die.

I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. A couple of times I tried to tell him it was a mistake to get too deep into that kind of stuff, but Alex got stuck on things. He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing.

brooding on a Colorado barstool, picking unhappily at my existential scabs

BERTRAND RUSSELL, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, AND OTHER ESSAYS ON RELIGION AND RELATED SUBJECTS

All religious belief is a function of nonrational faith.

In the charged and complicated spheres of identity, politics, philosophy, and power in America, though, racism was not situational but systemic.

The founding religion—at least in the Declaration—was based more on a religion of reason than of revelation. But it was still religion.

From Plato to Kant, the substance of what is known as the Golden Rule—one common to the world's religious and moral traditions—has occupied philosophers across the ages. Lincoln's own sensibility—both moral and political—was founded on this injunction. "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master," he once wrote. "This expresses my idea of democracy.

philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

Fear, Aristotle observed, does not strike those who are "in the midst of great prosperity.

Broadly put, philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson's genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

For the thoughtful believer, then, there is nothing more certain than the reality of uncertainty, nothing more natural than doubt, which is perhaps thirty seconds younger than faith itself (And even that approximation may be giving faith too much of a headstart).

Plenty of philosophical men live in abstract regions, debating types and shadows. The rarer sort is the reader and thinker who can see the world whole.

There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal.

Truth is the agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.

I'm starting to think paradise isn't eternal contentment. It's more like there's something eternal about feeling contented. There's no such thing as eternal life, because you're never going to outrun time, but you can still escape time if you're contented, because then time doesn't matter.

Can you imagine going to bed with Kierkegaard? He'd never stop asking, 'Can I do this to you? Is this okay?

I'm starting to think paradise isn't eternal contentment. It's more like there's something eternal about feeling contented. There's no such thing as eternal life, because you're never going to outrun time, but you can still escape time if you're contented, because then time doesn't matter. Does that make any sense?

I'm starting to think paradise isn't eternal contentment. It's more like there's something eternal about feeling contented. There's no such thing as eternal life, because you're never going to outrun time, but you can still escape time if you're contented, because then time doesn't matter.

He was certifiably insane, an Ayn Rander who fancied himself an Übermensch and "the Singularity's chosen avatar