Quotes About Philosophy

It was easier to come to maturity when there were more well-defined philosophical options.

I figure that unless you are in the business of politics, covering it or columnizing about it, politics should take up maybe a tenth corner of a good citizen's mind. The rest should be philosophy, friendship, romance, family, culture and fun. I wish our talk-show culture reflected that balance, and that the emotional register around politics were more in keeping with its low but steady nature.

Moderation is based on the idea that things do not fit neatly together. Politics is likely to be a competition between legitimate opposing interests. Philosophy is likely to be a tension between competing half truths. A personality is likely to be a battleground of valuable but incompatible traits.

Students are taught how to do things, but many are not forced to reflect on why they should do them or what we are here for.

Plato believed the soul was divided into three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite.

People who are humble about their own nature are moral realists. Moral realists are aware that we are all built from "crooked timber"— from Immanuel Kant's famous line, "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

Alexander Berkman was a self-declared atheist attempting to lift the stultifying fog of the gods from the mind of humankind.

Patience is a virtue but I don't have the time.

The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a 'meaning'and each of us is unique.

It has turned out, in fact, to be far harder to translate teleological into non-teleological language than had been anticipated by philosophers; or at any rate, by philosophers friendly towards Darwinism (as virtually all the writers in question are). Whether such translation is possible at all is more than anyone knows. As

You know, I've never actually really believed that death is inevitable. I just think it's a rumor.

Death gives us a whole new perspective on life" Excerpt from my recent journal titled "My Thoughts On Death

Although I'm Australian, I find myself much more in sympathy with the Austrian version!

How does the water of the brain turn into the wine of consciousness?

Psychology doesn't address the soul; that's something else.

To paraphrase one of my favorite math professors: The difference between great artists, and artists who are not so great, is that great artists think deeply about simple things.

When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you still see the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things too. That's the consolation of philosophy.

But so strong is our desire for meaning, an innate desire, that we construct meanings where there are none.

Philosophy is surgery; surgery is philosophy.

Reality is neurology, and is not absolute.

Consciousness is the original sin: consciousness of the inevitability of our death.

Nearly two thousand years ago the Greek philosopher, Epictctus, stated that people are disturbed "not by things, but by the views we take of them.

Religion is born out of questions, not answers.

Some gods deserve atheists.