Quotes About Philosophy

Yes, there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer, and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe : 'Schade, daß die Natur nur einen Menschen aus dir schuf; Denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.'

What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.

Nothing is little to a great mind.

His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done.

Das Leben ist unendlich seltsamer als alles, was der menschliche Geist erfinden könnte.

What, indeed? It is art for art's sake, Watson.

Dr. John Montague was a doctor of philosophy; he had taken his degree in anthropology, feeling obscurely that in this field he might come closest to his true vocation, the analysis of supernatural manifestations. He was scrupulous about the use of his title because, his investigations being so utterly unscientific, he hoped to borrow an air of respectability, even scholarly authority, from his education.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed by some, to dream.

I told them that Karl Marx was a theory and that theories change. Today it was this theory, tomorrow that one. But Tolstoi was a great artist and art remains forever.

Bit by bit they slipped back into their old strange talk. Maimonides, Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari, Philosophy, Spinoza, and other such nonsense which went in one ear and out the other.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away—until you're blue in the face, and you won't be any the wiser. What's that you say? Philosophizing is like chewing straw? My very words!

Then she gave him a few good smacks in the face. These he accepted like a philosopher.

It is only after we have integrated the dark side of the moon into our world view that we can begin to talk seriously of universal culture.

A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, Why is there so much suffering? Suzuki Roshi replied, No reason.

enjoy your problems

there is no absolute truth, there is only the interpretation of truth.

The intention that man should be happy is not in the plan of Creation.

In this way the ego detaches itself from the external world. It is more correct to say: Originally the ego includes everything, later it detaches from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we are aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige of a far more extensive feeling - a feeling which embraced the universe and expressed an inseparable connection of the ego with the external world.

If we are to take it as a truth that knows no exception that everything dies for internal reasons – becomes inorganic once again – then we shall be compelled to say that 'the aim of all life is death' and, looking backwards, that 'inanimate things existed before living ones'.

In this situation, what we call natural ethics has nothing to offer but the narcissistic satisfaction of being able to think one is better than others. This is where ethics based on religion enters the scene with its promises of a better life hereafter. I am inclined to think that, for as long as virtue goes unrewarded here below, ethics will preach in vain.

our philosophy has preserved essential traits of animistic modes of thought such as the over-estimation of the magic of words and the belief that real processes in the external world follow the lines laid down by our thoughts.

I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all.

But even so, one can just as well hold God responsible for the existence of the devil as for the evil he personifies.

Nonostante tutte le approssimazioni e anticipazioni nel mondo circostante, fu nello spirito di un uomo ebreo, Saulo di Tarso, che per la prima volta si affacciò l'idea: «Siamo così infelici perché abbiamo ucciso Dio Padre».