Quotes About Philosophy

Reason is flawless, de jure, but reasoners are not, de facto.

That's what's so striking about the title of Kushner's book: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. How is that fair? Well, the answer to that is that there are no good people.

Haven't you forgotten the first and most important lesson in all of philosophy, the lesson taught to all of us by Socrates, the father of philosophy? That you are wise only when you are humble, that the very first bit of wisdom and the prerequisite for all others is the realization that we are not wise

It is why God created matter, most of all the human body, which has the greatest power to make spirit visible. (Thus the philosopher Wittgenstein, asked what a human soul could possibly look like, answered, "Like a human body.")

If we seek the truth without realizing how far we are from it, we will be dogmatists. If we realize how far we are from the truth but do not seek it, we will be skeptics. If we both seek the truth and realize how far we are from it, we will be wise.

Not all the truths of faith can be proved by reason, but all arguments against the truths of faith can be disproved by reason.

St. Thomas is as practical and plain and reasonable in ethics as Aristotle, or Confucius, or your uncle.

Yes, organized religion is a crutch. You mean you didn't know that you are a cripple? If you don't know that, then you are a very serious cripple indeed, mentally and spiritually.

Plato was right when he said that all evil comes from ignorance. He forgot that ignorance also comes from evil.

When the worldly toys in which we foolishly place our hopes for happiness are taken away from us, our foolishness is also taken away, and this brings us closer to true happiness, which is not in worldly things but in wisdom.

we are fallen fools, most of our philosophy is not "the proper use of human reason" but the improper use of human reason.

The major heresies of our day are not about God but about man.

Like the Fellowship itself, Tolkien's philosophy fights. It conquers what George Orwell called the "smelly little orthodoxies" of political correctness that have twisted and wounded our souls. In other words, it is like the healing herb athelas (see LOTR, p. 193).

For he believed not only that there was all truth somewhere but also that there was some truth everywhere.

Heidegger says that "the fundamental question of metaphysics" is "why is there anything at all rather than nothing?" The fundamental question is not, as Plato thought, "what" a thing is (every Platonic dialogue is about that, about an essence, a definition, a concept, such as justice or piety or learning) but why it exists, why anything exists. Plato never asked that ultimate question. And the answer is God.

If the unhappiness of the wicked angels comes at length to an end, the happiness of the good will also come to an end, which is inadmissible.

The quantity comes from the efficient cause but the quality comes from the formal cause.

St. Augustine says, "If God is, why is there evil? But if God is not, why is there good?

The only honest reason for anyone ever to believe anything is that it is true, that it is really there.

Peter Kreeft

St. Thomas connects servile fear with dead faith (loveless faith) and filial fear with living faith.

To undo a contradiction, make a distinction.

Socrates: So was I. Bertha: Are you saying you're as great as him, then? Socrates: No, no, on the contrary, I'm assuming just the opposite!

Some philosophers