Quotes About Philosophy

not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame.

this noticeable in the South, where theology and religious philosophy are on this account a long way behind the North, and where the religion of the poor whites is a plain copy of Negro thought and methods.

sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.

He registered a dizzy 7.6 mmv over Brodmann 32, the area of abstractive activity. Since that time I have learned that a reading over 6 generally means that a person has so abstracted himself from himself and from the world around him, seeing things as theories and himself as a shadow, that he cannot, so to speak, reenter the lovely ordinary world. Such a person, and there are millions, is destined to haunt the human condition like the Flying Dutchman.

What Descartes did not know: no such isolated individual as he described can be conscious.

the self can be as desperately stranded in the transcendence of theory as in the immanence of consumption.

But if there's nothing wrong with me, he thought, then there is something wrong with the world. And if there is nothing wrong with the world, then I have wasted my life and that is the worst mistake of all.

As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair.

Is all niceness then or is all buggery? How can a man be forty-five years old and still not know whether all is niceness or buggery? How does one know for sure?

Pascal told only half the story. He said man was a thinking reed. What man is, is a thinking reed and a walking genital.

The real wonder is not that the Cosmos is now seen as wonderful but that it is not. Despite its inconceivable vastness, it is seen not as wonderful but as something that can be explained as a dyadic system.

Every moment think steadily as a Roman and a man, to do what thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity, and a feeling of affection and freedom and justice. These words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus strike me as pretty good advice, for even the orneriest young scamp.

He is a moviegoer, though of course he does not go to movies.

If Darwin was right, asked Wallace, why does the Tierra del Fuegan possess a brain not discernibly different from, say, Einstein's or Beethoven's, which he does not need?

All he had to do was solve the mystery of the universe, which may be difficult but is not as difficult as living an ordinary life.

For me, all signifiers fit me, one as well as another. I am rascal, hero, craven, brave, treacherous, loyal, at once the secret hero and asshole of the Cosmos.

Cassirer asks the question, How can a sensory content become the vehicle of meaning?

For him there is no present; there is only the past of what has been formulated and seen and the future of what has been formulated and not seen. The present is surrendered to the past and the future.

Joy said she hadn't really understood the meaning of life until Tyffanie had come along, but now she understood it perfectly. Well, great, I felt like saying. Make sure you share the news with Plato and Kierkegaard and all those other philosophers who'd banged their heads against the wall, trying to figure things out.

Faith doesn't give warranties.

Prophet. Kahlil Gibran.

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

There is no God any more divine than Yourself.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.