Quotes About Philosophy

These of us who have risen highest merely have a deeper awareness of how uncertain and empty everything is.

But just as my philosophy had ceased to interest me as soon as it was formulated into a set of principles so, when I saw myself being imitated, I realised at once what an incubus my aesthetic personality might become if I were to be trapped within it. Imitation changes, not the impersonator, but the impersonated.

Without thought he repeated some words which a boy had once chalked on the blackboard between lessons: 'A lump of coal is better than nothing. Nothing is better than God. Therefore a lump of coal is better than God'. And then he traced his own name with his finger on the cracked and broken floor.

What is the sweetness of flowers compared to the savour of dust and confinement?

A popular phrase of the time was that 'these be no causes to die for'.

Well,' said Hawksmoor. 'It's a theory and a theory can do no harm.

I guess I'm a hopeful optimist, because to be a pessimist is to be suicidal.

when it comes to the caprices and manipulations of the gods or God, whichever philosophy you may embrace, we are all of us merely pawns in their games, rather than players.

While the Enlightenment was a family of philosophers, it was something more as well: it was a cultural climate, a world in which the philosophers acted, from which they noisily rebelled and quietly drew many of their ideas, and on which they attempted to impose their program.

The Enlightenment may be summoned up in two words: criticism and power.

Doing philosophy is largely a matter of trying to put things together, trying to get the pieces of very large puzzles to make some sense

In philosophical discussions of decision-making, an action is said to be instrumentally rational if it is a good way of achieving the goal that the agent is pursuing, whatever that goal might be. When assessing actions according to their instrumental rationality, we do not worry about where the goals come from or whether they are appropriate goals. We just ask whether the action is likely to achieve the outcome that the agent desires.

But Toulmin and Goodfield's Fabric of the Heavens (1962.), an old book recently reprinted, is my favorite.

Reliable senses shared across all normal humans can be expected to deliver consensus. But it is also possible that we could have wide agreement without reliability; we might all be deluded in the same way. Some philosophers have thought that color vision is like this. Colors are not really out there in the world, even if we all experience them that way.

Perder así el continente ante un simple y estúpido sueño! ¿Y quién era él para hallar solo en tiempos sagrados sentido a la vida? ¡Basta de veleidades subjetivas! Le importaban demasiado las lucubraciones, que otros no podían siquiera permitirse.

Es beweist nichts; ist jeder Beweiskraft entzogen durch das Vorteile-Nachteile-Denken, das böseste der Lebensprinzipien. Alles hat nun einmal seine Vor- und Nachteile, und schon wird das Unzumutbare zumutbar - als Nachteil der wiederum nichts als eine notwendige Eigentheit jedes Vorteils ist.

Be egalitarian regarding persons. Be elitist regarding ideas.

Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all. Bertha: What's that? Socrates: Philosophy. Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here. Socrates: Where are they? Bertha: In the philosophy department. Socrates: Philosophy is not department. Bertha: Well, we have philosophers. Socrates: Are they dangerous? Bertha: Of course not. Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers.

It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it is reasonable to love the relative relatively.

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.

don't confuse scepticism as an attitude, or a method, with scepticism as a philosophy. Socrates was sceptical in temperament, and his method was to question everything. But he believed in absolute truth; he was no sceptic.

Philosophy is not confined to philosophers, thank God. Everyone has a philosophy. As Cicero famously said, you have no choice between having a philosophy and not having one, only between having a good one and having a bad one. And not to admit that you have a philosophy at all is to have a bad one. For it is one that does not know itself. So how could it know anything else, especially us?

Philosophy says truth, literature shows truth.

Philosophy makes literature clear, literature makes philosophy real.