Quotes About Philosophy

This kind of philosophy is, when conducted in self-aware fashion, what some of its most acute exponents always said that it was, a way of clarifying issues and alternatives but not if providing grounds for conviction on matters of any substance.

There is no practical rationality then without the virtues of character. The vicious argue unsoundly from false premises about the good, while the akratic ignores the sound arguments available to him. Only the virtuous are able to argue soundly to those conclusions which are their actions […]

it is not just that moral conclusions can not be justified in the way that they once were ; but the loss of the possibility of such justification signals a correlative change in the meaning of moral idioms

To be a philosopher is not of course necessarily to be in agreement with Aristotle. But it was increasingly an Aristotelian point of view that prevailed among Islamic philosophers and, when the greatest of the Islamic critics of philosophy, al-Ghazal!, attacks philosophers he identifies philosophy with Aristotelian philosophy.

Plato in both the Gorgias and the Republic looked back to Socrates and asserted that "it is better to suffer tortures on the rack than to have a soul burdened with the guilt of doing evil." Aristotle does not confront this position directly: he merely emphasizes that it is better still both to be free from having done evil and to be free from being tortured on the rack.

To call the Form [of the Good] eternal is misleading: that something lasts forever does not render it any the better, any more than long-enduring whiteness is whiter than ephemeral whiteness.

So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died, I felt like I had lost a limb.

Truly, it was beautiful to watch. Cruel, too - I admitted that. But what was beauty without a little cruelty at its heart?

Being a thing with a central nervous system complex enough to understand the concept of being a thing with a central nervous system. Simply being. Consider all the inanimate

Life was a very odd thing indeed, he reflected, when you really thought about it.

Weyl curvature tensor . . . but consciousness was no

No," I said emphatically. "Not in a million years. I might not be human. I might be nothing more than a set of algorithms, running on a spacesuit with a corpse inside it. But I'm not a monster.

Aristotle was talking about happiness 2,000 years ago. Every area of our life has been disrupted and innovated apart from personal growth and self-awareness.

I personally don't live a nihilistic life, I don't have any use for it.

Faith is the first step to understanding. Either it's the Word of an infallible God, the fallible words of men, or faith in what you personally believe. You've got to have faith in something. Believe me.

Clubs like Manchester United or Barcelona have a system, and then you hire personnel who fit this system.

He who is infatuated with 'Man' leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.

Playing the Mahatma at the start of my career has made a difference in my life as I had read a lot about him at that point of time. I still read a lot on him. His opinion about life and politics has affected a lot of persons, including me.

Don't pessimism and caution naturally go hand in hand?

I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.

I'm not a pessimist by nature. I'm not someone who sees things in a bleak way.

I'm not a pessimist at all, but I'm not an optimist, either.

I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way.

I'm a pessimist. But I think I'd describe my pessimism as broken-hearted optimism.