Quotes About Philosophy

Why is there something, rather than nothing?" is a question that anyone can ask.

How do we know that we exist? No one knows. Not so, you say. I think, therefore I exist. But how do you know that you think? No one knows that either. You just do.

Only good was created. Every evil thing is a good thing ruined. There are no other ways to get an evil thing.

In the Bible, God uses several different types of writing to convey his truth. There are narratives (often with commentary), preaching and exhortation (as in the prophets), laws and regulations, the distilled wisdom of Proverbs, philosophical discussion (as in Job and Ecclesiastes), and poetry (as in the Psalms). Poetry has its own ways.

The scientistic faith in a science that will one day not only fulfill, but eliminate, personal self-conception through objectifying self-description is not science, but bad philosophy.

Contextualism is only the flipside of logocentrism.

God does not suffer out of deficiency of being, like created beings. But he does suffer from his love, which is the overflowing superabundance of his being. And in this sense he can suffer.

The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence.

If it really were impossible to derive an ought from the is of the human design, then the practice of medicine would make no sense. Natural

If all meaning were relative, then the meanings of the terms in the proposition "All meaning is relative" would be relative. Therefore the proposition "All meaning is relative" destroys itself. It is nothing but an evasion of reality. That seems a high price to pay, even for the privilege of killing people.

In order to avoid believing in just one God we are now asked to believe in an infinite number of universes, all of them unobservable just because they are not part of ours. The principle of inference seems to be not Occam's Razor but Occam's Beard: "Multiply entities unnecessarily.

The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.

Communists are not liberals.

Communists are not progressives.

One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God.

I also like to look at the dynamic that takes place between religion and science because, in a way, both are asking the same questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? The methodologies are diametrically opposed, but their motivation is the same the wellspring is the same in both cases.

You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.

Agorism is the only philosophy that explains why, in an East German alley, a hooker and a bible smuggler ducking into the same doorway to avoid the police not only won't turn each other in but are also both acting right and proper.

Ayn Rand was a genius.

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

37. On this point, and the whole paragraph, see especially Oliver O'Donovan, The Ways of Judgment (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).

Poets, philosophers and seers have always concerned themselves with the idea of a true self, and the betrayal of the self has been a typical example of the unacceptable.