Quotes About Philosophy

Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.

The Meeting of East and West, by F. S. C. Northrop

Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.

The ideas, the things I was saying about science and ghosts, and even that idea this afternoon about caring and technology—they are not my own. I haven't really had a new idea in years.

The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle.

Is Euclidian geometry true or is Riemann geometry true? He answered, The question has no meaning. As well ask whether the metric system is true and the avoirdupois system is false; whether Cartesian coordinates are true and polar coordinates are false. One geometry can not be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous.

I think it was Coleridge who said everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. People who can't stand Aristotle's endless specificity of detail are natural lovers of Plato's soaring generalities. People who can't stand the eternal lofty idealism of Plato welcome the down-to-earth facts of Aristotle.

All day while I've been thinking and talking about Phaedrus they must have been thinking about how bad all this is. That's what's really wearing them down. The thought.

But what's "potential"? That's also in someone's mind!…Ghosts.

curar males para que la gente pueda vivir más tiempo; sólo los locos se preguntan para qué. Uno vive más tiempo con el objeto de vivir más tiempo. No existe otro propósito. Eso es lo que dice el fantasma.

The motorcycle is a system. A real system.

motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.

Robert M. Pirsig

Some say the good is found in happiness. But how do we know what happiness is and how can happiness be defined? If happiness and good are not objective terms, we cannot deal with them scientifically and since they aren't objective, they just exist in your mind, so if you want to be happy, you just change your mind. Ha ha ha.

I add, almost to myself, "You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.

You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.

And what is good, and what is not good- need we ask anyone to tell us this things?

But if you can't say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist.

we don't usually see that there's a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don't even have a term for it, so I'll have to use the Japanese mu.

Newton invented a new form of reason. He expanded reason to handle infinitesimal changes and I think what is needed now is a similar expansion of reason to handle technological ugliness. The trouble is that the expansion has to be made at the roots, not at the branches, and that's what makes it hard to see.

He went after it first, using the reductio ad absurdum. This form of argument rests on the truth that if the inevitable conclusions from a set of premises are absurd then it follows logically that at least one of the premises that produced them is absurd.

If subjectivity is eliminated as unimportant, he said, then the entire body of science must be eliminated with it.

Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle.

La vera motocicletta a cui state lavorando è una moto che si chiama voi stessi. La macchina che sembra là fuori e la persona che sembra qui dentro non sono separate. Crescono insieme verso la Qualità o insieme se ne allontanano.