Quotes About Philosophy

The difference between great philosophers who disagree is perhaps less considerable than that which separates them from their followers. Members of philosophic schools or coteries live on what others have seen, and the disciple usually applies his master's insights with a confidence which, most of the time, the master lacked.

The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life—that is the heart of existentialism.

Nietzsche says: "Nicht nur fort sollst du dich pflanzen sondern hinauf"—you should propagate yourself not only onward but upward: procreation need not be a senseless continuation of an essentially meaningless story and an addition of more and more zeros—it can really be a creation.

The different philosophic systems are to be considered as educational methods of the spirit: they have always developed one particular force of the spirit best by their one-sided demand to see things just so and not otherwise [XVI, 76].

For Nietzsche, the overman does not have instrumental value for the maintenance of society: he is valuable in himself because he embodies the state of being that has the only ultimate value there is; and society is censured insofar as it insists on conformity and impedes his development (cf. G. IX 44).

For time to pass it would have to go somewhere, and where would that be? Time sits. We move, it sits. Sometimes it trembles slightly, but that's all.

Given Loughner's obsession with meaninglessness and language, maybe Foucault & Derrida deserve some fault here, too.

Is it possible to be wiser on the page than you are in life? I'm hoping so.

epistemological

And one day it hit me—the perfection imagined by socialist theory was impossible for human beings to attain. The philosophy was right but we were poor vessels for it.

existentialist

It didn't matter that it wouldn't last. Beauty never did.

how many teachers since Socrates actually lived what they taught?

Then Nimitz, being Nimitz, posted the usual watches and did the only thing that made sense to him. "On that black night somewhere in the Philippines," he later recalled, "the advice of my grandfather returned to me: 'Don't worry about things over which you have no control.' So I set up a cot on deck and went to sleep.

In the wide pile, by others heeded not, Hers was one sacred solitary spot, Whose gloomy aisles and bending shelves contain For moral hunger food, and cures for moral pain.

he acquired a more complete mastery of a spirit tamed by adversity, than his former experience had given him; and that he felt himself entitled to say firmly, though perhaps with a sigh, that the romance of his life was ended, and that its real history had now commenced. He was soon called upon to justify his pretensions to reason and philosophy.

Mr. Sampson, you forget the difference between Plato and Zenocrates.

it was Zenocrates, not Plato, who denied that pain was an evil.

I won't close down a business of subnormal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate returns. I also feel it inappropriate for even an exceptionally profitable company to fund an operation once it appears to have unending losses in prospect. Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition and Karl Marx would disagree with my second; the middle ground is the only position that leaves me comfortable.

When Walter and Edwin were asked in 1989 by Outstanding Investors Digest, "How would you summarize your approach?" Edwin replied, "We try to buy stocks cheap." So much for Modern Portfolio Theory, technical analysis, macroeconomic thoughts and complex algorithms.

Mister Sun wondered if he really believed it was true that the heart is just a pump.

There are many good reasons for drinking, and one's just entered my head: If you don't drink when you're living, how the fuck can you drink when you're dead?

Don't take life seriously because you can't come out of it alive.

Syllogism ? Major premise: I can control my thoughts. Minor premise: My feelings come from my thoughts. Conclusion: I can control my feelings.