Quotes About Philosophy

Recent research by neuroscientists adds a twist here. Evidence exists that the human brain is "hardwired" (genetically programmed) for belief. Whether, if true, this wiring reflects an Intelligence beyond the universe depends on one's worldview. As Lewis states, what we learn from evidence "depends on the kind of philosophy we bring" to the evidence.

Aristotle says that 'nature makes instruments to fit the function, not the function to fit the instrument'.

When, therefore, we ask what ageing is for we must give the peculiar answer that it isn't for anything; it is, instead, the evolved consequence of there being no reason to stay alive.

I will not allow the Athenians to commit a second crime against philosophy.

From this point of view, a male cuttlefish who copulates with a dead female is not only wasting his time but making a serious philosophical mistake.

Este problema, hora es ya de revelarlo, no era otro que el origen del pensamiento.

evil< is also just another word for >toilet<

To look good in defeat is the ultimate a person can want.

If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?

My philosophy is to do the best you can for somebody. Help. It's not just what do you for yourself. It's how you treat people decently. The golden rule. There isn't big anything better than the golden rule. It's in every major religion in one language or another.

Samuel Beckett once said, "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness." ...On the other hand, he SAID it.

We are accused of pessimism, as though pessimism were but one among a number of possible attitudes, as if man were capable of choosing between two alternatives.

What is there? I know first of all that I am. But who am I? All I know of myself is that I suffer. And if I suffer it is because at the origin of myself there is mutilation, separation. I am separated. What I am separated from - I cannot name it. But I am separated.

Whatever philosophers may say after the event the conviction that we live in an external world of things and persons, where events are more or less regularly repeated, has never been treated as a speculative conjecture about which doubt was a duty till truth was proved. Beliefs like these are not scientific hypotheses, but scientific presuppositions, and all criticism of their validity is a speculative after-thought.

An optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist fears this is true.

OSSERVAZIONE DI ZENONE L'altra coda va più veloce.

The goal of the last phase of life is to drink from the chalice of life's deepest secrets. But to be able to do that requires study and work on philosophical and theological matters, which happens in the years of vanaprastha. You can't just show up and expect to be enlightened; that would be like showing up to the Olympics without ever having trained as an athlete.

The idea of moving to instruction later in life is a theme one finds in the great wisdom literatures from East to West.

Buddha spoke very frequently about the impermanence (in Sanskrit, anitya) of everything.

He taught that to be at peace, we must accept the impermanence of life and existence.

satisfaction is possible—just not with the old formulas. We need to toss out all that bad math and use this one equation instead, which incorporates the wisdom of Siddhartha and Thomas and the best modern social science: Satisfaction = What you have ÷ what you want Your satisfaction is what you have, divided by what you want.

It's a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering," replied Colbert. "I don't want it to have happened . . . but if you are grateful for your life . . . then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can't pick and choose what you're grateful for.

In his Summa Theologica, Saint Thomas Aquinas said, "To love is to will the good of the other."10 The modern philosopher Michael Novak refines this further by adding two words: "To love is to will the good of the other as other" (emphasis mine).11 He continues: "Love is not sentimental, nor restful in illusions, but watchful, alert, and ready to follow evidence. It seeks the real as lungs crave air.

That's because you Westerners see art as being created from nothing. In the East, we believe the art already exists, and our job is simply to reveal it. It is not visible because we add something, but because we take away the parts that are not the art.