Quotes About Philosophy

Thus, the Sage uses various rights and wrongs to harmonize with others and yet remains at rest in the middle of Heaven the Potter's Wheel.

You should find the same joy in one condition as in the other and thereby be free of care, that is all. But now, when the things that happened along take their leave, you cease to be joyful. From this point of view, though you have joy, it will always be fated for destruction.

There is a beginning. There is no beginning of that beginning. There is no beginning of that no beginning of beginning. There is something. There is nothing. There is something before the beginning of something and nothing, and something before that. Suddenly there is something and nothing. But between something and nothing, I still don't really know which is something and which is nothing. Now, I've just said something, but I don't really know whether I've said anything or not.

I'm going to try speaking some reckless words, and I want you to listen recklessly.

To use a finger as a metaphor for the nonfingerness of a finger is not as good as using nonfingerness as a metaphor for the nonfingerness of a finger.

Suppose I try saying something. What way do I have of knowing that if I say I know something I don't really not know it? Or what way do I have of knowing that if I say I don't know something I don't really in fact know it?

If right were ultimately right, its differentiation from not-right would require no debate.

The way comes about as we walk it.

To use a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to show that a horse is not a horse...

Thus, the Radiance of Drift and Doubt is the sage's only map. He makes no definition of what is right but instead entrusts it to the everyday function of each thing. This is what I call the Illumination of the Obvious.

The Book of Chuang Tzu is like a travelogue. As such, it meanders between continents, pauses to discuss diet, gives exchange rates, breaks off to speculate, offers a bus timetable, tells an amusing incident, quotes from poetry, relates a story, cites scripture. To try and make it read like a novel or a philosophical handbook is simply to ask it, this travelogue of life, to do something it was never designed to do. And always listen out for the mocking laughter of Chuang Tzu.

The dao is at the limit of the world of things. Speech and silence are not adequate to represent the idea of it. Neither speech nor silence can be the highest expression of our thinking about it.

The True Men of old used the eye to look at the eye, the ear to look at the ear, the heart to recover the heart. Such men as that when they were level were true to the carpenter's line, when they were altering stayed on course.

Jos haluaa näyttää oikeaksi sen, minkä ne kieltävät, tai vääräksi sen, minkä ne myöntävät, ei ole parempaa keinoa kuin käyttää järjen valoa.

Because there is, there is not, and because there is not, there is.

le monde] n'a pas besoin d'être gouverné ; en fait, il ne devrait pas être gouverné

Maan musiikin synnyttävät siis erilaiset onkalot; ihmisten musiikki syntyy bambupillistä, mutta rohkenenko kysyä, mitä on taivaan musiikki? Tuuli puhaltaa kymmenellätuhannella eri tavalla ja jokainen ääni syntyy omalla tavallaan. Tämä tapahtuu luonnostaan, mutta kenen käskystä ne syntyvät?

The breathing of the wise person comes from their heels, while most people breathe only from their throats.

Everyone knows how useful usefulness is, but no one (4:20) seems to know how useful uselessness is.

He set forth his intractable ideas but was never partisan or restricted to his own subjective stance. He moved alone with the spirit of heaven and earth, and did not exalt himself above all things. He did not dispute right and wrong, but sought to live peacefully with the prevalent views.

I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.

I already am eating from the trash can all the time. The name of this trash can is ideology. The material force of ideology makes me not see what I am effectively eating.

We need useless theory more than ever today.

What we philosophers can do is just correct the questions.