Quotes About Philosophy

Science grows by its mu answers more than by its yes or no answers.

Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can't reason without them.

That's the way the world keeps on happening. Be interested in it.

To reach him you have to back up and back up, and the further back you go, the further back you see you have to go, until what looked like a small problem of communication turns into a major philosophic inquiry.

metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.

A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance.

not sure of much of anything these days. Maybe that's why I talk so much.

A photograph can show a physical image in which time is static, and a mirror can show a physical image in which time is dynamic, but I think that what he saw on the mountain was another kind of image altogether which was not physical and did not exist in time at all.

To all appearances he was just drifting. In actuality he was just drifting. Drifting is what one does when looking at lateral truth.

The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws—which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior.

It's the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil.

The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location.

I spit on my glove tips, touch it and can see the sizzle. Not good.

There is a classic esthetic which romantics often miss because of its subtlety. The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos and make the unknown known.

You don't have to go fishing, of course, to fix your motorcycle.

Zen is the "spirit of the valley," not the mountaintop.

What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow.

Why should an irrational method work when rational methods were all so rotten? He had an intuitive feeling, growing rapidly, that what he had stumbled on was no small gimmick. It went far beyond. How far, he didn't know.

What we have here is a conflict of visions of reality. The world as you see it right here, right now, is reality, regardless of what the scientists say it might be. That's the way John sees it. But the world as revealed by its scientific discoveries is also reality, regardless of how it may appear

Real science and real philosophy are not guided by preconceptions of what subjects are important to consider. That

Historically mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of reality metaphysics is too "scientific". Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is names about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty-thousand-page menu and no food.

It's all right," Phaedrus said. "We just accidentally stumbled over a genuine question, and the shock is hard to recover from.

The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn't separate from the rest of your existence.

One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose.