Quotes About Philosophy

Morality flows from metaphysics because goodness flows from God.

From Socrates through Aquinas, reason meant primarily the understanding of the nature of reality, the knowledge of the essences of things.

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?

Doesn't certainty about a universal negative require omniscience? Don't you have to have knowledge of everywhere to know that there is no X anywhere?

The universe is the sum total of all these moving things, however many there are. The whole universe is in the process of change. But we have already seen that change in any being requires an outside force to actualize it. Therefore, there is some force outside (in addition to) the universe, some real being transcendent to the universe. This is one of the things meant by God.

Many people disbelieve in angels because they disbelieve in spirit. They believe only matter exists.

Peter Kreeft

Socrates says we must be either fools because we think we are wise, or wise because we know we are fools. Christ says we must be either sinners who think we are saints, or saints who know we are sinners. Even

Hence the fact that some happen to doubt about articles of faith is not due to the uncertain nature of the truths, but to the weakness of human intelligence;

All that exists is metaphysically true and metaphysically good.

The soul is the form of the body and the body is the matter of the soul, somewhat as the meaning of a book is its form or soul and the words are its matter or body.

Some say that to the gods we are like flies that boys idly swat on a summer day. Others say that not a feather from a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of the Heavenly Father." Those are the only two options.

For we are not pure spirits who happen to be trapped in bodies. We are not even spirits who only have bodies, for we do not have bodies as we have possessions. We are bodies as well as souls.

we have that the animal does not: reason and free will, or free choice.

Science asks what and how, philosophy asks why, myth and religion ask who. Who's

4) But only man knows consciously and rationally, and only man's loves can be conscious and rational and responsible through free will.

The purpose of arguing is not to win. Arguing is not a game. It's not, I'm cleverer than you are. The purpose of argument is like the purpose of science: to know. It's a means, not the only means, of knowing, of transferring us from ignorance to knowledge, a way of getting out of that cave. Philosophy is, in some obvious ways, not like what we today call science, but in some other less than obvious ways, it's very similar to what we today call science.

these relativists turn out to be not relativistic at all about one thing: their relativism. That's their one nonnegotiable absolute.

As I said, relativism says there are no absolutes. Absolutely no absolutes.

the doctrine of anamnesis: that all learning-that is, all learning of eternal truths-is really a remembering

We must distinguish the act of faith from the object of faith, believing from what is believed.

The distinction between the natural and the supernatural is a distinction between two abstract aspects, not two concrete things.

Aristotle had discovered only half the principle of inertia—that a body at rest remains at rest unless moved by another—but not the other half—that a body in motion remains in motion unless acted on by another.

Aristotle also believed that a vacuum was impossible.