Quotes About Philosophy

An argument is valid when there is no way—meaning no possible way—that the premises, or starting points, could be true without the conclusion being true

I have argued that philosophy doesn't begin in wonder or in the fact that things are, it begins in a realization that things are not what they might be. It begins with a sense of a lack, of something missing, and that provokes a series of questions.

Death makes cynics of us all

For Habermas, scientism means science's belief in itself: that is, 'the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one form of knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with science'.

The denial of death is self-hatred.

Cioran escribe que «sólo se suicidan los optimistas, los optimistas que ya no logran serlo. Los demás, no teniendo ninguna razón para vivir, ¿por qué la tendrían para morir?»

there is a felt gap here-the gap between knowledge and wisdom- that cannot be closed through empirical enquiry. That is, the question of the meaning of life in not reducible to empirical enquiry. This felt gap between knowkedge and wisdom is the very space of critical reflection. In philosophy, but also more generally in cultural life, we need to clip the wings of both scientism and obscurantism and thereby avoid what is worst in both Continental and analytic philosophy.

Una notable ventaja que debemos a la filosofía consiste en el soberano antídoto que nos ofrece contra las supersticiones y la falsa religión. Todos los otros remedios contra esa pestilente enfermedad son en vano o, en cualquier caso, de dudosa utilidad.

We live with – and within – a gap between knowledge and wisdom. It is time philosophers, and everyone else, started to try and think about that gap. Maybe more than our personal peace of mind is at stake.

To utter a word and meaning nothing by it is unworthy of a philosopher. Berkeley

Philosophers have a long tradition of marrying stupid women, from Socrates on. They think it clever.

We get what fate deals out to us, lad. And we have no choice about how we handle it.' Cato smiled. 'What's this? Philosophy?' 'Experience, lad. Much better.

Não existe utilidade prática em saber que Ï€ é irracional, mas, se podemos saber, então certamente seria intolerável não saber.

Pascal was even convinced that he could use his theories to justify a belief in God. He stated that 'the excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win multiplied by the probability of winning it'.

The art of number theory is so abstract that it is frighteningly easy to wander off the path of logic and be completely unaware that one has strayed into absurdity

On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanely butchered by the hands of Peter the Reader and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics; her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames.

Pythagoras, the teacher, paid his student three oboli for each lesson he attended

The construction of mathematical logic had become the arbiter of truth. This was the Pythagoreans' greatest contribution to civilisation - a way of achieving truth which is beyond the fallibility of human judgement.

With geology—a knowledge-based account of the nature of planet Earth, which one might legitimately regard as the ur-science—now unleashed from churchly teaching, other kinds of rational thinking started to seep into and infect all the other realms of natural philosophy. Science in its most general sense took off as a legitimate field of study and challenge, and the free-thinking rationality and free will that is the

Porque não contestam as mulheres a soberania do macho? Nenhum sujeito se coloca imediata e espontaneamente como não essencial; não é o Outro que, definindo-se como Outro, define o Um; ele é posto como Outro pelo Um definindo-se como Um. Mas para que o Outro não se transforme no Um é preciso que se sujeite a esse ponto de vista alheio. De onde vem essa submissão na mulher?

I could see no reason for being sad. It´s just that it makes me unhappy not to feel happy.

On ne naît pas femme: on le devient.

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

but all day long I would be training myself to think, to understand, to criticize, to know myself; I was seeking for the absolute truth: this preoccupation did not exactly encourage polite conversation.