Quotes About Philosophy

socrates. Renouncing the honors at which the world aims, I desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when I die, to die as well as I can. And, to the utmost of my power, I exhort all other men to do the same. Gorgias 526de

On a Socratic view it's never time to give up. We do better by accepting that the search probably has no end but going on anyway as if it might. For even if you can't possess the truth, you can get closer to it.

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side. Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

Always the beautiful answer Who asks a more beautiful question. —E.E. Cummings

Basic formula: Q (questioning) + A (action) = I (innovation). On the other hand, Q – A = P (philosophy).

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in - in 2007, we just didn't know it was uncertain. It was - uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th 1987, you just didn't know it.

Don't take life seriously because you can't come out of it alive.

I seek truth in a book and not the subject.

Thus we look upon the geometric point as the ultimate and most singular union of silence and speech.

Yes to fingerfucking the dialectic! Or to using the dialectic as a method of fingerfucking the binary!

There is no such thing as a dog

o rir é, no fim de contas, uma variante de chorar...

Nonviolence is an ideal propped up against the cultural reality of violence.

In their ambivalent attitude to violence, the Hindus are no different from the rest of us, but they are perhaps unique in the intensity of their ongoing debate about it.

Much of Upanishadic thought represents a radical break with the Vedas.

The circularity of karma is explicitly set from the time of creation: You must be what you are; you cannot change your qualities.

Voltaire was deeply impressed by it and cited it often.

Life gives meaning to life. The answer to the meaning of life is hidden right there inside the question.

Sometimes people think they are looking for the meaning of life, when really they are looking for an understanding of why they are here. What their purpose is, the purpose of life in general. And that's a much easier question to answer than the meaning of life.

The meaning of life is to give life a meaning.

The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels grateful and has no one to thank.

It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth.

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.

I was asked something about the economic problem of Communism. I answered, citing Dostoyevsky: "The problem of Communism is not an economic problem. The problem of Communism is the problem of atheism.