Quotes About Philosophy

Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.

Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.

I grew up in a small industrial suburb of Haifa in Israel. As far back as I remember, I was interested in big questions. Who are we? What are we doing here? But the chances to discuss philosophy were quite thin on the ground.

It was reading Hamlet that ruined the concept of authenticity for me, not because Hamlet lacked existentialist credentials himself - indeed, as an earlier discontented Dane, he could be said to have laid the ground for Kierkegaard - but because the line 'to thine own self be true' was spoken by that humourless old ninny, Polonius.

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

There is no such thing as death; life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.

To the soul, there is no past and no future; all is, and will be ever, in now. For artificial purposes time is mutually agreed on, but there is really no such thing.

Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

I'm a believer in karma, and I'm also a believer that things happen for a reason.

I think that things happen for a reason.

I think things happen, and we have no control over them, and what you take from them is really what is important.

So many things happen for every event, and if you try to manipulate it, it means you are struggling against the whole universe, and that's just silly.

You can have immediate regrets, but if you look at stuff and say, 'Things happen for a reason', there's a fatalistic thing about it. Something will happen that will justify it in some way.

I don't think things happen for a reason, but I think it's perfectly possible to experience life meaningfully.

I'm very religious. I believe that things happen, and you have to go along with them.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

Very obviously, the electorate as a mass has not imbibed the philosophy of 'think national, act local' or even 'think big and beyond' - it is a case, more, of 'think local, act local, and let the national equation take care of itself.'

The subject of death is taboo. We feel, perhaps only subconsciously, that to be in contact with death in any way, even indirectly, somehow confronts us with the prospect of our own deaths, draws our own deaths closer and makes them more real and thinkable.

I think sometimes I should do more carousing, because I don't do much and maybe it would be fun occasionally. It's hard for me to have fun and I'm a serious thinker and a searcher and funny from the front.

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

The heart is the best reflective thinker.