Quotes About Philosophy

Let scholastic sophisters entangle themselves in their own cobwebs; I am resolved to take my own existence, and the existence of other things, upon trust; and to believe that snow is cold, and honey sweet, whatever they may say to the contrary. He must either be a fool, or want to make a fool of me, that would reason me out of my reason and senses.

Philosophy has no other root but the principles of common sense.; it grows out from them, and draws its nourishment from them; severed from this root, its honours wither up, its sap is dried up, it dies and rots.

In every chain of reasoning, the evidence of the last conclusion can be no greater than that of the weakest link of the chain, whatever may be the strength of the rest.

There is nothing so absurd which some philosophers have not maintained.

All the arguments urged by Berkeley and Hume against the existence of a material world, are grounded on this principle, That we do not perceive external objects themselves, but certain images or ideas in our own minds

And a man who perfectly understood a just syllogism, without believing that the conclusion follows from the premises, would be a greater monster than a man born without hands or feet.

Individual psychotherapy - that is, engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship - requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and philosophy of life for such work. By that I mean that the therapist must be patient, modest, and a perceptive listener, rather than a talker and advice-giver.

To say that God's goodness may be different in kind from man's goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good?" —John Stuart Mill

We find also here Charles Haanel, with his Master Key System, and his Eastern Philosophy books like "The Amazing Secrets of the Yogi".

It is an old saying that "Order is Heaven's First Law," and like many other old sayings it contains a much deeper philosophy than appears immediately on the surface. Getting things into a better order is the great secret of progress, and we are now able to fly through the air, not because

a duality in which there is no other opposition than that of the inner and the outer of the same unity, the polarity which is inherent in all Being,

Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, born 551 B. C., said: "Obey Heaven, and follow the orders of Him who governs it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do to another what you would he should do unto you; and do not unto another what you would should not be done unto you; thou only needest this law alone, it is the foundation and principle of all the rest. Acknowledge thy benefits by the return of other benefits, but never revenge injuries." [415:1]

What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second, and third days, in which the evening is named and the morning, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise like an husbandman?

Ammonius Saccus (a Greek philosopher, founder of the Neo-platonic school) taught that: "Christianity and Paganism, when rightly understood, differ in no essential points, but had a common origin, and are really one and the same thing." [411:3]

Scotch Kirk, speaking of the precept uttered by Confucius, five hundred years before the time assigned for the birth of Jesus of Nazareth ("Whatsoever ye would not that others should do unto you, do not ye unto them"), says: "That Confucius is the author of this precept is undisputed, and therefore it is indisputable that Christianity has incorporated an article of Chinese morality.

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.

Man is born to live, to suffer, and to die, and what befalls him is a tragic lot. There is no denying this in the final end. But we must deny it all along the way.

Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

I have never been able to grasp the meaning of time. I don't believe it exists. I've felt this again and again, when alone and out in nature. On such occasions, time does not exist. Nor does the future exist.

Even in times of the most entrenched rationalism, there lives in every man a little Alexander who never managed to conquer his Eudaimon Arabia.

The first and last schoolmaster of life is living and committing oneself unreservedly and dangerously to living; to men who know this an Aristotle and a Plato have much to say; but those who have imposed cautions on themselves and petrified themselves in a system of ideas, them the masters themselves will lead into error

As Plato, the dangerous beguiler, said: the best philosophers in the world are boys with their beards new on their chins; I am a boy again.

and most profoundly personal philosophical inquiry that we can undertake. It is the question that defines us as human beings. The novel begins precisely at noon on July 20

religions are merely the garments of faith—and very ill cut they often are