Quotes About Philosophy

Commonly, people think of philosophy as a quest, however ill advised, for truth. John Dewey called it the quest for certainty. But it is more illuminating to say that, at its best, philosophy is the quest for honesty.

Marxism is not necessarily what Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital, but whatever it is that all the warring sects believe, who claim to be the faithful. From the gospels you cannot deduce the history of Christianity, nor from the Constitution the political history of America. It is Das Kapital as conceived, the gospels as preached and the preachment as understood, the Constitution as interpreted and administered, to which you have to go.

But if our philosophy tells us that each man is only a small part of the world, that his intelligence catches at best only phases and aspects in a coarse net of ideas, then, when we use our stereotypes, we tend to know that they are only stereotypes, to hold them lightly, to modify them gladly.

We need — and should encourage and honour — not only discoverers of facts hitherto unknown but explorers of ideas and rethinkers of values.

Je weniger qualvoll die Todesart, desto weniger attraktiv die Tiere. Wenn du friedlich an Altersschwäche stirbst, siehst du nur ein Huhn. Das letzte Huhn. Es gackert, und du bist hinüber.

Und nun verstand ich es, das Geheimnis der Musik, ich verstand, warum sie allen anderen Künsten so turmhoch überlegen ist: Es ist ihre Körperlosigkeit. Wenn sie sich einmal von ihrem Instrument gelöst hat, dann gehört sie wieder ganz sich selbst, ist ein eigenständiges freies Geschöpf aus Schall, schwerelos, körperlos, vollkommen rein und in völligem Einklang mit dem Universum.

Wer einmal gelernt hat, in der Melancholie zu Hause zu sein, der kann es selbst in der schlechtesten aller Welten aushalten. Gute Lektüre, schwarzen Humor und gesunde, gut abgehangene Melancholie, mehr braucht man eigentlich nicht.

We born dyin'...But you ask a man an' he talk like he gonna live forevah.

La filosofía antiemoción sigue vigente en infinidad de lugares y subculturas

aquellos que logran transitar el camino de la sabiduría, sea por la vía de la filosofía o por cualquier otro medio, no necesitan de nada más, incluyendo el dinero.

Conozco infinidad de "heráclitos" que se desplazan por la vida llevando la carga de amargura y pesimismo a cuestas, obviamente sin la genialidad de aquél; y bastantes "demócritos" que, aunque no son sabios, tratan de ponerle buena cara al mal tiempo.

La falsa paradoja: idiota feliz o sabio infeliz queda resuelta. Hay una tercera opción mejor: sabio feliz, así sea redundante, porque no existe sabiduría sin alegría.

El maestro llevaba muchos años predicando que la vida no era más que ilusión. Cuando murió su hijo, rompió a llorar. Sus discípulos se le acercaron y le dijeron: –Maestro, ¿cómo puede llorar tanto si nos ha explicado que todas las cosas de esta vida son una ilusión? –Sí —respondió el sabio, enjugándose las lágrimas que resbalaban por sus mejillas—, ¡él era una ilusión tan hermosa!

La función del hombre sabio consiste, sobre todo, en deliberar rectamente… Y delibera rectamente, en el sentido más estricto de la palabra, quien apunta en sus cálculos hacia las más altas actividades abiertas del hombre. ARISTÓTELES, Ética de Nicómaco, VI

Todo fluye, todo cambia, todo nace y muere, nada permanece, todo se diluye; lo que tiene principio tiene fin, lo nacido muere y lo compuesto se descompone. Todo es transitorio, insustancial y, por tanto, insatisfactorio. No hay nada fijo de qué aferrarse».

Do not Christians and Heathens, Jews and Gentiles, poets and philosophers, unite in allowing the starry influences?

Je problematischer der Charakter, desto problemloser erscheint ihm die Welt.

As I swept the last bit of dust, I made a covenant with myself: I will accept. Whatever will be, will be. I have a life to lead. I recalled words a friend had told me, the philosophy of her faith. "Life is a journey and a struggle," she had said. "We cannot control it, but we can make the best of any situation." I was indeed in quite a situation. It was up to me to make the best of it.

The first principle of practical Stoicism is this: we don't react to events; we react to our judgments about them, and the judgments are up to us.

They are all matters of opinion, and taken up voluntarily because it seems right to do so. This error, as the root of all evils, philosophy promises to eradicate utterly. Let us therefore devote ourselves to its cultivation and submit to being cured; for so long as these evils possess us, not only can we not be happy, we cannot even be right in our minds.

seeing how small our affairs look in the larger scheme of things, the Stoic means to induce a felt sense of humility and attraction to virtue. The method can be called intuitive because it isn't a matter of argument. It's more a question of showing and pointing, and expecting perceptions and adjustments to follow directly from a new point of view.

If we treat Socrates as an internalized feature of the mind, then this is its first and constant order of business: uprooting false conceits of knowledge.

Aporia can not only prepare you to learn but make you want to learn.4 It feels frustrating. In effect Socrates says: good—now get going on the search for an answer, this time with a better sense of the work it takes. You are made hungry for knowledge by discovering how little you have.

If you would attain real freedom, you must be the slave of philosophy. Epicurus, quoted in Seneca, Epistles 8.7