Quotes About Philosophy

The first principle of monotheist religions is 'God exists. What does He want from me?' The first principle of Buddhism is 'Suffering exists. How do I escape it?

Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights.

Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who founded the Cynical school, lived in a barrel. When Alexander the Great once visited Diogenes as he was relaxing in the sun, and asked if there were anything he might do for him, the Cynic answered the all-powerful conqueror, 'Yes, there is something you can do for me. Please move a little to the side. You are blocking the sunlight.

More than a century after Nietzsche pronounced Him dead, God seems to be making a comeback. But this is a mirage. God is dead – it's just taking a while to get rid of the body.

God is dead – it's just taking a while to get rid of the body.

According to the Buddha, then, life has no meaning, and people don't need to create any meaning. They just need to realise that there is no meaning, and thus be liberated from the suffering caused by our attachments and our identification with empty phenomena.

The Buddha taught that the three basic realities of the universe are that everything is constantly changing, nothing has any enduring essence, and nothing is completely satisfying. You can explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy, of your body, or of your mind, but you will never encounter something that does not change, that has an eternal essence, and that completely satisfies you.

Our narrating self would much prefer to continue suffering in the future, just so it won't have to admit that our past suffering was devoid of all meaning. Eventually, if we want to come clean about past mistakes, our narrating self must invent some twist in the plot that will infuse these mistakes with meaning.

the real enigma of life is not what happens after you die but what happens before you die.

since there is only one real world, whereas the number of potential virtual worlds is infinite, the probability that you happen to inhabit the sole real world is almost zero.

The big question facing humans isn't "what is the meaning of life?" but rather "how do we stop suffering?

The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is 'shit happens'.

the realest thing in the world is suffering.

Morality doesn't mean "following divine commands." It means "reducing suffering." Therefore in order to act morally, you don't need to believe in any myth or story.

How do you live in an age of bewilderment, when the old stories have collapsed and no new story has yet emerged to replace them?

Perhaps I am the only being in the entire universe who feels anything, and all other humans and animals are just mindless robots? Perhaps I am dreaming, and everyone I meet is just a character in my dream? Perhaps I am trapped inside a virtual world, and all the beings I see are merely simulations?

2 As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how.

According to humanism, humans must draw from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe. This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world.

suffering arises from craving; the only way to be fully liberated from suffering is to be fully liberated from craving; and the only way to be liberated from craving is to train the mind to experience reality as it is. This

ethical perspective, monotheism was arguably one of the worst ideas in human history.

There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.

For centuries humanism has been convincing us that we are the ultimate source of meaning, and that our free will is therefore the highest authority of all.

Pero el enigma real de la vida no es qué ocurre cuando nos morimos, sino qué ocurre antes. Si queremos comprender la muerte, necesitamos comprender la vida.

Which means that when designing their self-driving car, Toyota or Tesla will be transforming a theoretical problem in the philosophy of ethics into a practical problem of engineering