Quotes About Philosophy

If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government.

The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. 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.

Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something less than Quality itself.

Things that seem morally obvious and intuitive now weren't necessarily so in the past; many started with nonconforming reasoning.

When deontologism and consequentialism contemplate trolleys, the former is about moral intuitions rooted in the vmPFC, amygdala, and insula, while the latter is the domain of the dlPFC and moral reasoning. Why is it that our automatic, intuitive moral judgments tend to be nonutilitarian? Because, as Greene states in his book, "Our moral brains evolved to help us spread our genes, not to maximize our collective happiness.

I can't really imagine how to live your life as if there is no free will. It may never be possible to view ourselves as the sum of our biology. Perhaps we'll have to settle for making sure our homuncular myths are benign, and save the heavy lifting of truly thinking rationally for where it matters—when we judge others harshly.

Robert M. Sapolsky

C'est toujours stupide de mourir. - Oui, dit Gabet en tournant vers Maillat son visage naïf, on ne voit pas très bien à quoi ça sert, n'est-ce pas?

His life was focused on each single day. For him each night meant a void, a grave, extinction. The capacity to lay oneself down to die at the end of every day, without thinking anything of it, was something he had not yet acquired.

You proclaim that one should die for the highest virtues, because you take it for granted that nobody's been living for them, not even for a single hour.

What's the bee in your bonnet? Seems to be some kind of idealism.

Unsere Zeit ist eine Zeit der Erfüllung, und Erfüllungen sind immer Enttäuschungen.

Ich weiß jetzt nichts von Rätseln. Alles geschieht: Das ist die ganze Weisheit.

And Törless could not think but that the problems of philosophy had been solved once and for all by Kant, rendering that a pointless pursuit, just as he also thought it was not worth writing poetry after Goethe and Schiller.

Die Wahrheit ist eben kein Kristall, den man in die Tasche stecken kann, sondern eine unendliche Flüssigkeit, in die man hineinfällt.

Les idéaux ont de curieuses qualités, entre autres celle de se transformer brusquement en absurdité quand on s'essaie de s'y conformer strictement.

And suddenly, in view of these reflections, Ulrich had to smile and admit to himself that he was, after all, a character, even without having one.

Ä°nsan ne yaparsa yaps?n, dedi Niteliksiz Adam kendi kendine, omuzlar?n? silkerek çeÅŸitli güçlerden oluÅŸan bu yuma??n içinde bu, hiç, ama hiç önem ta??m?yor!

daß in einem ehedem sehr bekannten psychiatrischen Lehrbuch die Frage: »Was ist Gerechtigkeit?« und die Antwort darauf: »daß der andere bestraft wird!« als ein Fall von Imbezillität angeführt werden, wogegen sie heute die Grundlage einer viel erörterten Rechtsauffassung bilden.

Leute, die jederzeit zu sterben meinen, leben lang!

Naturally, no professional man of our time bases his arguments on those of philosophy and theology, but as perspectives—empty, like space, and yet, like space, telescoping the objects in it—these two rivals for the last word of wisdom persist everywhere in invading the optics of each special field of knowledge.

Seiner größten Hingabe an die Wissenschaft war es niemals gelungen, ihn vergessen zu machen, daß die Schönheit und Güte der Menschen von dem kommen, was sie glauben, und nicht von dem, was sie wissen.

Das Unmoralische gewinnt sein himmlisches Recht als eine drastische Kritik des Moralischen!

Ein Wissender weiß, dass nichts wahr ist und die ganze Wahrheit erst am Ende aller Tage liegt.