Quotes About Philosophy

It is easy to be tolerant of the principles of other people if you have none of your own.

Why do I write? To investigate the mystery of existence. To tolerate myself. To get closer to everything that is outside of me.

I'm most impressed by the Russian writers, so I love reading the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Another author who has informed the way I think is the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal.

What Tolstoy is on about is that carnal love is not a good idea.

In 'A Confession,' Tolstoy found meaning that he could hold on to, and he lived for another 30 years.

Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th.

I have no parents: I make the heaven and earth my parents. I have no friends: I make my mind my friend. I have no enemy: I make carelessness my enemy. I have no armor: I make benevolence and righteousness my armor. I have no castle: I make immovable mind my castle. I have no sword: I make absence of self my sword.

Sometimes I have a terrible suspicion that the whole tragedy, from first to last, has no meaning.

HIPPOLYTUS: I can't sin against a God I don't believe in.

Brahma is the Generator, Vishnu the Organizer and Shiva the Destroyer. Together they are G.O.D. or Brahman. All the millions of Hindu gods are just forms of the one Supreme Being.

Happiness begins to deteriorate once it is named.

Choose one: chronic disappointment or lowering your expectations to the point where nothing can disappoint you. But consider also that you might miss feeling disappointed.

I tried to record each moment, but time isn't made of moments; it contains moments. There is more to it than moments.

Giving up and submitting to suffering looks the same as achieving total detachment and surpassing the Buddha.

No extra hospital words. I don't want a relationship with disease. I want to have a relationship with death. That's important. But to have a relationship with disease --that's some kind of bourgeoisie invention. And I hate it.

Certain brands of guilt can be inculcated in a secular way but other brands of guilt can only be obtained with reference to the metaphysical.

While I gave up God a long time ago, I never shook the habit of wanting to believe in something. So I replaced my creed of everlasting life with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

As Nietzsche said, when we have a why we can handle any how.

Francis Schaeffer's Escape from Reason.

Francis Schaeffer's Escape from Reason. To my great surprise and delight, that small book had answered questions I'd long before dismissed as unanswerable.

I just couldn't understand how you could go from being alive, from having molecules and blood cells constantly shifting around inside you, and thought processes and a mind full of memories and dreams and love and hate, and in just one tiny second these miraculous things stop and you're dead. How could all that disappear? What happened to your soul, your essence, your wonder? Just because a muscle stops beating? It made absolutely no sense.

Pascal had formulated a famous wager in favor of the existence of God: If you bet there is no God and you are wrong, a wrathful deity is likely to condemn your eternal soul to hellfire; but if you gamble that there is a God and there is not, your consciousness will cease to exist upon your death and you will never know that you were wrong.

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it don't matter.