Quotes About Philosophy

Seven Wise Men, he tells Gregory: here are their sayings. Moderation in all things, nothing to excess (those two are the same, wisdom can be repetitious). Know yourself. Know your opportunity. Look ahead. Don't try for the impossible. And Bias of Priene: pleistoi anthropoi kakoi, most men are bad.

We don't have to invite pain in, he thinks. It's waiting for us: sooner rather than later.

He does not even hate Francis Weston, any more than you hate a biting midge; you just wonder why it was created.

Somewhere – or Nowhere, perhaps – there is a society ruled by philosophers. They have clean hands and pure hearts. But even in the metropolis of light there are middens and manure-heaps, swarming with flies. Even in the republic of virtue you need a man who will shovel up the shit.

Occam's Razor shaves you closer.

Somewhere—or Nowhere, perhaps—there is a society ruled by philosophers. They have clean hands and pure hearts. But even in the metropolis of light there are middens and manure-heaps, swarming with flies. Even in the republic of virtue you need a man who will shovel up the shit, and somewhere it is written that Cromwell is his name.

Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement. Whether we want to be there or not, science has put us in the position of having to live without foundations. It was shocking when Nietzsche said this, but today it is commonplace; our historical position-and no end to it is in sight-is that of having to philosophise without 'foundations'.

In today's pick-and-mix culture, evolutionary psychology proposes itself as yet another possible opiate for the people. Freud and Marx are dead – so long live Darwin.

Man may be considered as a superior species of animal who produces philosophies and poems in about the same way a silkworm produces their cocoons and bees their hives.

Primum non nocerum. (First do no harm)

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

And in this way truly you may see that it is not a god that injures the body, but disease.

Do you remember how many breads you have eaten in your life?

In the Great Hall of the Linz Library are the busts of Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the greatest of our thinkers, in comparison with whom the British, the French and the Americans have nothing to offer...It is on the foundation of Kant's theory of knowledge that Schopenhauer…conquered the pragmatism of GWF Hegel. I carried Schopenhauer's works with me throughout the whole of the First World War. Schopenhauer...has been far surpassed by Nietzsche.

Och det har till sist börjat gå upp för mig som en aning -: det är kanske icke meningen att man skall förstå livet. Allt detta raseri att förklara och förstå, all denna sanningsjakt är kanske en avväg.

Jag tror icke att en tänkare behöver söka ensamheten. Den ensamhet, han behöver, för han med sig, som snigeln sitt hus. Mitt i människovimlet följer den honom, ty den är ingen yttre omständighet, men en egenskap.

Som barn tänkte jag mig alltid själen som en liten fågel. I en illustrerad världshistoria som min far hade såg också att egypterna avbildade den som en fågel. Men en fågel flyger inte högre än luften räcker, och den räcker inte långt. Den hör till jorden den också. I skolan hade vi en lärare i naturkunnighet som förklarade för oss att ingenting av det som finns på jorden kan komma bort ifrån den.

It's the kind of day that might make you wonder about the meaning of life, and discover that there is none.

He was saying that the end of the world wasn't an accident; it was a joke.

Nothing can happen more beautiful than death - Walt Whitman

Beer is the cause and solution to all of life's problems.

To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.

But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.

I believe in the incomprehensibility of God.