Quotes About Philosophy

It's possible that there is a guiding intelligence in our universe. I don't see a lot of personal evidence for an interventionist-on-an-individual-basis-deity. I have friends who very much do believe in that. But I don't.

I'm not modern or ancient: I'm just contemporary. I'm sure every guru of his time was contemporary.

My first dream as a young boy was to be a gymnast and my first memory of football is of watching Ajax win the European Cup in 1971. It was a time when a great philosophy was being developed at Ajax, making rounded players who were there as a complete team rather than as 11 individuals.

To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring.

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

'Hamlet' is the most famous play in the world for a reason. The journey you go on is incredible.

Conservatives have long argued, correctly, that 'fine-tuning' the economy is a chimera, but that argument seems to have disappeared from the conservative handbook.

life (pause) is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.

We come from people who brought us up to believe that life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.

If it were not for the truth of fiction there would not be any truth at all.

Coils within coils," murmured the cat. "Fleas upon fleas, idiots begetting idiots—" "What?" "Mmm, just thinking," whispered Mogget. "You should try it sometimes.

Might have been and could have done, neither worth thinking on,' said Huire, repeating one of their mother's favourite sayings.

One of the most empowering moments of my life came when I realized that life is a question and how we live it is our answer.

In fact, if you look at the last four syllables of the word individuality, you will see that they spell duality. That's not just a semantic accident.

You have to realize that, compared with the Korean brand of Confucianism, Christianity is a walk in the park. Compared with what came before, Protestantism is almost a freaking liberation theology.

If only beauty could explain the world away.

What I like most about Buddhism really is its fearlessness. So much of what warps people is fear of death and fear of impermanence. So much of what we do is simply strategies to try and hold back death, trying to buy time with material things. So at its best Buddhism provides people with a way of seeing their own frailty: you need less in the way of material objects and fortresses around yourself.

One can almost apply Gabriel Marcel's famous insight: life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

The philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed.

The poetic image exists apart from causality.

Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.

And when a philosopher looks to poets, to a great poet like Milosz, for lessons in how to individualize the world, he soon becomes convinced that the world is not so much a noun as an adjective.

The intellectualist philosopher who wants to hold words to their precise meaning, and uses them as the countless little tools of clear thinking, is bound to be surprised by the poet's daring. And yet a syncretism of sensitivity keeps words from crystallizing into perfect solids. Unexpected adjectives collect about the focal meaning of the noun. A new environment allows the word to enter not only into one's thoughts, but also into one's daydreams. Language dreams.

How much philosophers would learn, if they would consent to read the poets!