Quotes About Philosophy

War spells out my philosophy of "No right or wrong"— just "Your right, my wrong"—everything is subjective.

For Philosophers: No, the computer doesn't "think". Unfortunately, there's no better word for what it really does. We say "think" on the grounds that it's all right to say, "the lamp needs a new light bulb." Whether the lamp really *needs* a bulb depends on whether it *needs* to provide light (that is, incandescence is its karma). So let's just say the computer thinks.)

Not for nothing was Smith's first book about moral philosophy. His concern, as Foley says, was the one that has haunted economic thinking ever since: "how to be a good person and live a good and moral life within the antagonistic, impersonal, and self-regarding social relations that capitalism imposes.

Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in seeking it.

Look, doctor, China, the country without religion. The Chinese have no religious ideas, only a kind of philosophy. In the Middle Kingdom no grain has been cultivated for thousands of years. Only rice.

A young khokhem told his grandmother that he was going to become a doctor of philosophy. The bubbe smiled proudly: "Wonderful. But what kind of disease is 'philosophy'?

Two shlemiels were drinking tea. In time, one looked up and announced portentously: "Life! What is it? Life—is like a fountain!" The other pondered for a few minutes, then asked, "Why?" The first thought and thought, then sighed. "So okay: life isn't like a fountain.

All of Judaism's philosophy, ethics, ethos, learning, education, and hierarchy of values are saturated with a sense of, and heightened sensitivity to, rakhmones. God is often called the God of Mercy and Compassion: Adonai El Rakhum Ve-Khanum. The writings of the prophets are permeated with appeals for rakhmones, a divine attribute. (So, too, are the words of Jesus and the books of the New Testament.)

Life is too short to live with any but the greatest books.

There is a remarkable sentence of Pascal according to which we know too little to be dogmatists and too much to be skeptics, which expresses beautifully what Plato conveys through his dialogues.

Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for "vulgarity"; they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful.

H]e (Socrates) thus implies that there is a parallelism between the city and the human individual or, more precisely, between the city and the soul of the human individual. This means that the parallelism between the city and the human individual is based upon a certain abstraction from the human body.

Aristotle doesn't exist for Nietzsche.

Ik zal met mijn verstand niet kunnen begrijpen waarom ik bid en toch zal ik blijven bidden.

How important the concept of God is, and how instead of valuing what has been given us, we with light hearts spurn it because of absurdities that have been attached to it.

The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human wisdom.

You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light.

If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.

Life is too long to say anything definitely; always say perhaps.