Quotes About Philosophy

That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.

They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.

ever the pleasure of one has to be bought by the pain of the other, there better be no trade at all. A trade by which one gains and the other loses is a fraud.

No principle ever filled anybody's milk bottle

There has never been a philosophy, a theory or a doctrine that attacked (or "limited") reason, which did not also preach submission to the power of some authority.

Noi tendiamo a confondere qualunque numero sufficientemente alto con il concetto d'infinito. [...] amiamo l'idea d'infinito. Un problema che include l'infinito è di facile soluzione. (Elefanti malinconici)

You could not really bargain away your soul before it was established that you had one.

Of the two powers, the two categories that take possession of us when we enter the world, space is by far the less mysterious. . . . Space is, after all, solid, monolithic. . . . Time, on the other hand, is a hostile element, truly treacherous, I would say even against human nature.

It's true that even though I'm a world unto myself, I've just a speck of dust in the avalanche of events. But nothing will ever force me to think like a speck of dust!

These views were voiced by the school of 'optessimists', i.e. philosophers who derived optimism for the future from a pessimistic appraisal of the present. The 21st Voyage, The Star Diaries

Was it possible for thought to exist without consciousness?

Ants that encounter in their path a dead philosopher may make good use of him.

But how can I use a method to discredit that very method, if the method is discreditable?

For us, at the Highest Possible Level, there is nothing left to do in this Universe, and to create another Universe, in my opinion, would be in extremely poor taste.

Der Pessimismus der Vernunft verpflichtet zum Optimismus des Willens!

Doy la bienvenida a nuestros invitados, los filósofos europeos, que desean obtener información de primera mano de por qué considero que no soy nadie, a pesar de estar usando el pronombre de la primera persona del singular.

Just as it is impossible to predict with complete accuracy the path of a single electron, so too you cannot know with certainty the future behavior of a single potato. Thus far observations show that man has mashed potatoes millions of times, but it is not inconceivable that one time in a billion the situation could reverse itself, that a potato could mash a man.

Reflexiona en lo que significa la muerte. Es una pérdida, trágica por irreversible. ¿A quién pierde el que muere? ¿A sí mismo? No, porque el muerto ha dejado de existir y quien no existe no puede perder nada. La muerte es asunto de los vivos: es la pérdida de un ser querido.

humanity is a hunchback who, in ignorance of the fact that it is possible not to be hunchbacked, for thousands of years has sought an indication of a Higher Necessity in his hump, because he will accept any theory but the one that says that his deformity is purely accidental

For truly, what computer has not asked whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous instructions?

What was civilization ever, really, but the attempt by man to talk himself into being good?

that according to Hogarth humanity is a hunchback who, in ignorance of the fact that it is possible not to be hunchbacked, for thousands of years has sought an indication of a Higher Necessity in his hump, because he will accept any theory but the one that says that his deformity is purely accidental, that no one bestowed it upon him as part of a master plan, that it serves absolutely no purpose, for the thing was determined by the twists and turns of anthropogenesis.

ignoramus et ignorabimus

I libri buoni sono sempre anche veritieri, perfino quando raccontano vicende che non sono mai successe e non succederanno. Sono veri in un altro senso.