Quotes About Philosophy

Nothing is absolute any longer, Mr. Panofsky. There is a choice of beliefs and a choice of truths to go with them. If you choose not to choose then there is no truth at all. There are only points of view.…" "Still, that is no answer." "What if there are no answers? Or if the answers offered are not suitable – what then? Perhaps there are only more questions.

Everything hurts, Fergal. All the time. Start with that and life won't be able to disappoint you.

But my mind keeps on thinking," Connla offered hopefully. "As long as I am thinking, I must be alive."  The ant pondered this. "There are many who never think, yet are considered to be alive," it said.  "Then what is 'being alive'?

I'm not teaching you how to move your feet; I'm teaching you how to move your mind

The heart of a human being is no different from the soul of heaven and earth. In your practice always keep in your thoughts the interaction of heaven and earth, water and fire, yin and yang.

Bushido is not learning how to die. Bushido is learning how to live, how to protect and foster life. Even in war, the taking of human life is to be avoided as much as possible. It is always a sin to kill. Give your opponents every chance to make peace

Throw your partner by not throwing, pin him by not pinning.

Bushido is not learning how to die; it is learning how to live

Be grateful even for hardship, setbacks, and bad people. Dealing with such obstacles is an essential part of training in the Art of Peace.

One should be prepared to receive 99 percent of an enemy's attack and stare death right in the face in order to illumine the Path. Regardless of how grim a situation, it is still possible to turn things around in your favor

The Art of Peace is the religion that is not a religion; it perfects and completes all religions.

Can there really be a martial art in which one downs his attacker with a smile?

Philosophy is that activity by which the meaning of propositions is established or discovered; it is a question of what the propositions actually mean. The content, soul, and spirit of science naturally consist in what is ultimately meant by its sentences; the philosophical activity of rendering significant is thus the alpha and omega of all scientific knowledge. [Moritz Schlick interpreting Ludwig Wittgenstein's position]

The question is," Harry whispered, trying desperately to joke, "whether it's better to be dead from the neck up or the neck down," and the doctor smiled, knowing Harry was protecting himself with his sense of irony.

An idea is something you have; an ideology is something that has you

The scholastic method encouraged subtlety, intellectual agility, a sharpening of scholarly wits. It provoked a rage for philosophy, which occupied the schools at the expense of humanistic and scientific studies. Compromising by nature, it did not lead to the discovery of great final truths. It led, rather, to aridity, spiritual casuistry, and, with its ever more fine-spun distinctions, to absurdity.

Aristotle says, "Now what is characteristic of any nature is that which is best for it and gives most joy. Such to man is the life according to reason, since it is that which makes him man.

Geometry . . . is the science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind. —THOMAS HOBBES

Even the greatest Greek algebraist, Diophantus, who lived during the latter part of the Alexandrian Greek civilization (around A.D. 250), rejected irrationals as numbers.

predecessor of Isaac Newton at Cambridge University, maintained that irrational numbers have no meaning independent of geometric lengths.

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

A creative element is surely present in all great systems, and it does not seem possible that all sympathy or fundamental attitudes of will can be entirely eliminated from any human philosophy.

The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies..

God has no attributes.