Quotes About Philosophy

Beauty is something that disappears when you try to define it.

Virtue comes through contemplation of the divine, and the exercise of philosophy. But it also comes through public service. The one is incomplete without the other. Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless.

Action is the activity of the rational soul, which abhors irrationality and must combat it or be corrupted by it. When it sees the irrationality of others, it must seek to correct it, and can do this either by teaching or engaging in public affairs itself, correcting through its practice. And the purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone, they become no more than beasts.

The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place.

Philosophy cannot be extinguished, though men will try ... The spirit seeks the light, that is its nature. It wishes to return to its origin, and must forever try to reach enlightenment.

If we take seriously the idea that all objects recede interminably into themselves, then human perception becomes just one among many ways that objects might relate. To put things at the center of a new metaphysics also requires us to admit that they do not exist just for us. The Computer

Second, writing is dangerous for philosophy—and for serious scholarly practice in general. It's not because writing breaks from its origins as Plato would have it, but because writing is only one form of being. The long-standing assumption that we relate to the world only through language is a particularly fetid, if still bafflingly popular, opinion.

The solution to the Muslim problem is a Muslim Voltaire, a Muslim Nietzsche—that

Why isn't everybody the way they were at first? I wonder.

Ayn Rand was the godmother of laissez faire capitalism, the Virgin Mary of Libertarianism. She died in 1982. She spent her life attempting to turn selfishness into a religion so that people could claim their greed was grounded in the nature of man. Her heinous ideas and crappy books have given politicians philosophical cover to promote their "greed is good" agenda for decades.

The best reaction to a paradox is to invent a genuinely new and deep idea.

My philosophy was, if I just do good work, someone will like it enough to employ me. It never made me famous. And I'm way, way too old now, mate. That boat's sailed.

Totul se redusese la a bea ast?zi, pentru c? s-ar putea s? nu mai existe ziua de mâine.

Do you think it's a conspiracy?' 'Mr Durukan, if God is dead then everything is conspiracy.

are they, will they be, have they ever been truly happy?

He's never fought with religion; what is the point of railing against such beauty, such intimate theatre, such chime of eternity? He can treasure it without believing in it.

I don't believe there's any inherent darkness at the center of religion at all. I think religion actually is a morally neutral force.

Strip the veneer, and the world had moved only a couple of steps from the cave.

Pretty much.

trapped in limbo, believing in a lack of belief, but not necessarily lacking the belief to believe.

If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't.

El universo es infinitamente rico y complejo y suceden en él todo tipo de cosas maravillosas. Pero no deberíamos confundir los resultados con las causas e imaginar que el propósito del universo es hacer seres humanos.

Platonist view of mathematical ideas: that mathematical truths 'really' exist, but they do so in an ideal form in some sort of parallel reality, which has always existed and always will.

Monotheism has also been recognized as inherently intolerant.