Quotes About Philosophy

This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real.

It's not that the worm forgives the plough; it gives it no mind. (Pain occurs, in passing.) (lines 37-39 in the poem 'Fantasia on a Theme from IKEA')

William Leonard Courtney (then sixty-one-year-old theatre and literary editor of the Daily Telegraph, he had been an Oxford professor of philosophy until forced to resign when his homosexuality became public knowledge)

he sees that it does not accord with the practices of the sage-kings of old and does not promote the benefit of the people in the world today. And so our teacher Mozi says, "Musical performances are wrong!

To lack a constant livelihood, yet to have a constant heart—only a scholar is capable of this.

Mengzi responded, "If Your Majesty regards them as excellent, then why do you not put them into practice?" The King said, "We have a weakness. We are fond of wealth.

For those who have not yet grasped the Way but are seeking the Way, I say: Emptiness, single-mindedness, and stillness—make these be your principles. If

In order to decide, judge; in order to judge, reason; in order to reason, decide (what to reason about).

What's that got to do with it?" Sam said. "A humorist is a man whose soul is black, black, but who turns his curdles of darkness into explosions of light. But when the light dies out, the black returns.

Human beings are part of nature. Anything they do is natural. It's impossible for anything in nature to do anything unnatural.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.

We must abandon our belief that human choice denigrates the Rule of Law.

Berlín. Yo adoraba esta vieja ciudad. Pero eso fue antes de que se mirara en su propio reflejo y le diera por llevar unos corsés tan ajustados que apenas podía respirar. Yo adoraba las filosofías fáciles y despreocupadas, el jazz barato, los cabarés vulgares y todos los demás excesos culturales que caracterizaron los años del Weimar y que hicieron de Berlín una de las ciudades más apasionantes del mundo.

Me and Schopenhauer. Sometimes being German seems to come with some serious disadvantages.

If there's one thing history has taught me to believe it is that it's dangerous to believe in anything very much.

Is that what we are? Fools?" "Certainly. But at least we know we're fools. And in today's Germany, that counts as a kind of wisdom." •

Therein lies the true essence of Marxism. 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs' only ever works with a gun in your hand. How

Plato talks about something called anamnesis, which is when something long forgotten comes to the surface of a man's consciousness. Now, I'll admit that just sounds like a fancy word for remembering something, but actually it's more than that because with remembering, it's not necessary to have forgotten anything, which makes for a subtle distinction. That's what cinema does.

Crimes are committed when men take an idea that seems like a good idea and then can't think of good enough reasons why it might not be a good idea.

Have I been wrong, to think the breath That sharpens life is life itself, not death?

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

he [Llewelyn Powys] has always in mind the great touchstone Death & consequently life is always judged as how far it fits us, or compensates us, for ultimately dying.