Quotes About Philosophy

In a slick manifesto called Cosmos, Carl Sagan artfully packaged his own creed: "The Cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it maximized his utility.

I hope you still think that ideas are more dangerous than material things," Quentinsaid. "That was what you were arguing at lunch.

but it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation to the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist.

Have you by any chance an edition of St. Ignatius's treatise against the Gnostics?" he asked in a low clear voice. The young assistant looked gravely back. "Not for sale, I'm afraid," he said. "Nor, if it comes to that, the Gnostic treatises against St. Ignatius." "Quite," Anthony answered.

Out of any two thoughts I have, one is devoted to death.

Existence doesn't have more meaning in one direction than it does in any other.

We're two sides of an infinitesimally thin coin. Slice the coin thinner and thinner, and we get closer and closer to each other. We can slice it arbitrarily thin, let the limit of the thickness approach zero. Slice it until there's no one or nothing in between, until we meet at zero.

April 13, or a November 2? Living like this

Or rather, a dialogue, between myself and my future self, in which my future self is telling my present self what I have already finished thinking but have not yet realized I thought. This is consistent with Libet (1983).

Nature wants us to enjoy life to the full and die without giving it a second thought; Christianity wants the opposite.

In the end, everything is a gag.

He said if a tree fell down in a forest, and there was nobody there to hear it, would it make a sound? I think what he meant was that sounds only become sounds when we hear them, otherwise it's just waves that go through the air. So if there were no ears there to pick up the sound waves then is there any sound at all?

Morality he found amusing, in the obscure way that only a man with a Ph.D. in philosophy could find such things amusing, but justice and ethics were inflexible measures, applicable to all, and not to be joked about.

Think about a night like that often enough, you'll ask yourself a lot of questions. Most of them about yourself. The kind of person you are. What you'll do and why and when you'll do it. What you believe in. What you really believe in.

Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.

Buddhism is more a philosophy for living rather than a religion or dogma - it's about being awake, free from illusions and fear, so that compassion and loving kindness permeates all of our relationships.

I think," said Ethel, breaking in, "the philosophy is this: I believe that it is a trying life. I know teaching takes a great deal out of one; and loneliness may cause tendencies to dwell on fancied slights in trifles, that might otherwise be hurried over. But I think the thing is, to pass them over, and make a conscience of turning one's mind to something fresh—

It is time we reverted to the teaching of Socrates. 'Know thyself,' exhorted the wise man, in season and out of season; and it will be well with us when we understand that to acquaint a child with himself––what he is as a human being––is a great part of education.

Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.

Be thankful for the good, be patient under the evil, and presume not to enquire why the latter predominates

One is not, my dear sir, a superior man merely because one sees the world in an odious light. One only hates mankind and life itself through failing to look deeply enough.

L'arbre tombe feuille à feuille : si les hommes contemplaient chaque matin ce qu'ils ont perdu la veille, ils s'apercevraient bien de leur pauvreté.