Quotes About Philosophy

Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.

We may seek to distance ourselves from bullshit, but we are more likely to turn away from it with an impatient or irritated shrug than with the sense of violation or outrage that lies often inspire. The problem of understanding why our attitude towards bullshit is generally more benign than our attitude toward lying is an important one...

Like you, my boy, I am a Scientific Humanist and feel no need for the aid of the supernatural.

He and Onno had once come to the conclusion that you had to decide for yourself whether after your death you wanted to return to your father, then you must go into fire, because that was spirit, but your mother was of course the earth, the body.

Die vraag is te goed om met een antwoord te verknoeien.

De vraag, wat dat was tussen hen, zouden zij pas later bespreken - toen het er niet meer was, toen al die dagen in hun herinnering ineengevloeid waren tot een eeuwig-onvergetelijke dag. Ook de grieken, wist hij, die de grondslag hadden gelegd van de westerse cultuur, bezaten geen woord voor cultuur. De woorden kwamen pas als de zaak was verdwenen.

Aber vielleicht war es das alles zugleich, unter Vernachlässigung des Gesetzes des ausgeschlossenen Dritten und zur ewigen Beschämung derjenigen, die glaubten, etwas davon zu verstehen.

Boeken die niet gebaseerd zijn op een schema zijn weekdieren.

die Welt war die Suppe und das Denken meistens eine Gabel: zu einer sättigenden Mahlzeit führte das selten.

If you find life absurd, shouldn't you find death precisely meaningful?

De wereld was soep en het denken meestal een vork: tot smakelijk eten leidde dat zelden.

Al het oude was eens nieuw, en al het nieuwe zal eens oud zijn. Het alleroudste is het heden, want er is nooit iets anders geweest dan het heden. Nooit heeft iemand in het verleden geleefd, en in de toekomst leeft ook niemand.

Besides, whoever keeps the future in front of him and the past at his back is doing something else that's hard to imagine. For the image implies that events somehow already exist in the future, reach the present at a determined moment, and finally come to rest in the past. But nothing exists in the future; it is empty; one might die at any minute. Therefore such a person has his face toward the void, whereas it is the past behind him that is visible, stored in the memory.

The oldest thing of all is the present, because there's never been anything else but present. No one has ever lived in the past, and no one lives in the future, either.

The world was a soup and thought was generally a fork: it seldom resulted in a good meal.

It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story .

3. What is the purpose of our creation?

Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas.

I actually pray everyday, but I don't believe in God.

I kept my poker face on and listened to him with an air of interest and respect (I thought of what it says in one of Rand's novels, how the winner can afford to be generous).

In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met along the way

The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.