Quotes About Philosophy

You know the classification of cultures into 'Apollonian' and 'Dionysian.

Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness

the ways of God and government and girls are all mysterious, and it is not given to mortal man to understand them.

A paradox may be paradoctored.

most things are right or wrong only in their backgrounds; few things are good or evil in themselves.

ago he had made a pact with himself to postulate a created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days—since each hypothesis, whole paradoxical, avoided the paradoxes of the other—with a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery.

Eh? I don't grok your answer." Mike hesitated. "I will try. But words are . . . are not . . . rightly. Not 'putting.' Not 'mading.' A nowing, World is. World was. World shall be. Now." " 'As it was in the beginning, so it is now and ever shall be, World without end—

Pop, who maintained that a wise man could not be insulted, since truth could not insult and untruth was not worthy of notice.

The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together!

This school is based on the idea that a man who can think correctly will automatically behave morally—or

Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either—he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days—since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other—with, of course, a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery.

Religion is a solace to many and it is conceivable that some religion, somewhere, is Ultimate Truth. But being religious is often a form of conceit. The

property' is not the natural and obvious concept that most people think it is.

Ownership is a sophisticated abstraction, a mystical relationship.

But how, from the viewpoint of a Martian, did man differ from other animals? Would a race that could levitate and god knows what else be impressed by engineering? If so would the Aswan Dam or a thousand miles of coral reef win first prize? Man's self awareness, sheer conceit. There was no way to prove that sperm whales and sequoias were not philosophers and poets exceeding any human merit?

Could it be that every one of all religions is true?

Being aware that he had but a short time to live and having neither Martian nor Kansan faith in immortality, he purposed to live each golden moment as eternity—without fear, without hope, with sybaritic gusto.

human being has no natural rights of any nature.

All 'nows' are equal; that is the basic theorem of time travel. They don't disappear; both 'past' and 'future' are mathematical abstractions; the 'now' is always all there is.

A man isn't a collection of chemical reactions, he is a collection of ideas.

we are even developing an exact ethic for extra-human relations.

Infinity" is not a number; it is a metaphysical hang-up.)

I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke. That doesn't mean I don't read and can't think. I read everything from Giblett to Hoyle, from Sartre to Pauling. I read in the tub, I read on the john, I read in bed, I read when I eat alone, and I would read in my sleep if I could keep my eyes open.

There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to see a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's science. Three: Awareness that you live in a malevolent universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset