Quotes About Philosophy

It is not unusual now to hear religion and humanism spoken of as if they were opposed, even antagonistic. But humanism clearly rested on the idea that people have souls, and that they have certain obligations to them, and certain pleasures in them, which arise from their refinement or their expression in art or in admirable or striking conduct, or which arise from finding other souls expressed in music or philosophy or philanthropy or revolution.

Meaningless would come as a terrible blow to most people. It would be full of significance for them. So it wouldn't be meaningless. That's where I always end up. Once you ask if there is meaning, the only answer is yes. You can't get away from it.

I have had a certain amount of experience with skepticism and the conversation it generates, and there is an inevitable futility in it.

It was absurd to think that things were held in place, are held in place, by a web of words.

In college all of them had studied the putative effects of deracination, which were angst and anomie, those dull horrors of the modern world. They had been examined on the subject, had rehearsed bleak and portentous philosophies in term papers, and they had done it with the earnest suspension of doubt that afflicts the highly educable.

doctrine is not the same as belief, it is simply a way talking about it; beliefs are lived

A metaphysics is a great help in rationalizing scruple-driven behavior.

Boughton takes a very dim view of him, because he unsettled the faith of many people, but I take issue as much with those people as with Feuerbach. It seems to me some people just go around looking to get their faith unsettled.

She said, "meaninglessness would come as a terrible blow to most people. It would be full of significance for them. So it wouldn't be meaningless. That's where I always end up. Once you ask if there is meaning, the only answer is yes. You can't get away from it.

Ideology is a straight-edge ruler in a fractal universe.

Doctrine is not belief, it is only one way of talking about belief.

The old man always said we should attend to the things we have some hope of understanding, and eternity isn't one of them.

the worst misfortune isn't only misfortune

I suspect Scottishness is another name for predestination. It explains everything, more or less.

would come to me and ask me how the Lord could allow such a thing. I felt like asking them what the Lord would have to do to tell us He didn't allow something.

Tehching Hsieh—for me, always a true master of performance art, and one who truly represents transformation. Tehching has made five performances in his life, each of them lasting for one year. He followed this with a thirteen-year plan, in which he made art without showing it. If you ask him what he's doing now, he will say he is doing life. And this, for me, is the ultimate proof of his mastery.

a world in a grain of sand | And a heaven in a wild flower'.

The teleological argument, or argument from design, attempts to furnish evidence for God's existence from the apparent design of the world.

Even though it is almost impossible to attribute with certainty any specific mathematical achievements either to Pythagoras himself or to his followers, there is no question that they have been responsible for a mingling of mathematics, philosophy of life, and religion unparalleled in history. In this respect it is perhaps interesting to note the historical coincidence that Pythagoras was a contemporary of Buddha and Confucius.

The Pythagoreans were probably the first to recognize the concept that the basic forces in the universe may be expressed through the language of mathematics.

Michael could never remember his father ever having uttered a word about death, as if the Don respected death too much to philosophize about it.

Yet he thought, if I die saying Life is beautiful, then nothing else is important.

What manner of men are we then, if we do not have our reason.

jak w?a?ciwie nale?a?o ?y? - szcz??liwie czy moralnie?