Quotes About Philosophy

I gave up Christianity at about fourteen. Came back to it when getting on for thirty. An almost purely philosophical conversion. I didn't want to. I'm not the religious type. I want to be let alone, to feel I'm my own master: but since the facts seemed to be the opposite I had to give in.

Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, and sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past effect in the future, but future and past are intertwined.

If time and the passage of events are the same, then time moves barely at all. If time and events are not the same, then it is only people who barely move. If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who

I wonder about this emptiness," he said. "It would seem not to have any existence independent of our perception of it. An interesting substance. One could think it pleasant or unpleasant, strong or weak, and that would in fact be its reality.

If time and the passage of events are the same, then times move barely at all. It time and events are the same, then it is only people who barely move. If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

In fact, this is a world without future. In this world, time is a line that terminates at the present, both in reality and in the mind. In this world, no person can imagine the future.

But what is the past? Could it be, the firmness of the past is just illusion? Could the past be a kaleidoscope, a pattern of images shift with each disturbance of a sudden breeze, a laugh, a thought? And if the shift is everywhere, how would we know?

The most profound questions seem to have this fascinating aspect: Either they have no answer at all, or all possible answers seem impossible. So, here's one more profound question: Did anything exist before the Big Bang? Was the Big Bang the beginning of time? Or was there something before, some kind of eternal "meta-universe" that spawned our universe and possibly other universes?

Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove.

Theoretical physics is the deepest and purest branch of science. It is the outpost of science closest to philosophy, and religion. Experimental scientists occupy themselves with observing and measuring the cosmos, finding out what stuff exists, no matter how strange that stuff may be. Theoretical physicists, on the other hand, are not satisfied with observing the universe. They want to know why .

For me the big questions about life are: 1. How should I live in the world? 2. Why should I live this way?

Einstein leans over to Besso, who is also short, and says, I want to understand time because I want to get close to The Old One.

There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.

Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.

A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?

Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. Perhaps it simply is, has been, will always be there…a clock without a craftsman.

Who? Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask.

Roses are red Violets are blue Everything's possible Nothing is true.

We are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.

Does the human heart know chasms so abysmal?

My dear, beautiful and imaginative things can be destroyed. Beauty and imagination cannot.

I'm the idea of the human imagination, which, when you think about it, is the only thing we can really be certain ISN'T imaginary.

Jon, wait before leave... I did the right thing didn't I? It all worked out in the end. 'In the end'? Nothing ends Adrian. Nothing ever ends. Jon? Wait! What do you mean by ...