Quotes About Philosophy

He that best understands the world, least likes it. - Benjamin Franklin, 1753

Locke On Human Understanding, and the Art of Thinking, by Messrs. du Port Royal.

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money. Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

As the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard noted, life can only be understood backwards—but it must be lived forwards.

But the basic Taoism that we are concerned with here is simply a particular way of appreciating, learning from, and working with whatever happens in everyday life.

Now, scholars can be very useful and necessary, in their own dull and up amusing way. They provide a lot of information. It's just that there is something more, and that something more is what life is really about.

Now, scholars can be very useful and necessary, in their own dull and unamusing way. They provide a lot of information. It's just that there is Something More, and that Something More is what life is really all about.

I think, therefore I am... confused.

Hast du manchmal Angst?", fragt er. "Ich meine nicht Angst vor einer Prüfung. Oder dem Erzieher. Sondern so richtig Angst. So Angst vor dem Leben. Weißt du?" Troy schluckt. Er beugt sich nach vorn. "Leben ist Angst haben", sage ich. Mir wird unangenehm. Eigentlich habe ich noch nie darüber nachgedacht. Aber ich glaube, es stimmt.

Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.

Astrological prayers seem to me to be built on as good reason as the predictions.

The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed.

There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.

Fear is the denomination of the Old Testament belief is the denomination of the New.

The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realizing that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.

We did a little yoga together. Sometimes he let me give him a massage. But when I mentioned meditation to him, he said that the only meditations he knew were those of Descartes and Husserl.

I can understand why it takes some people a long time to really be a singer. You have to find out, 'Why am I singing? What am I doing this for?' I do it because I enjoy it, and philosophically, music is a catalyst. It's a refining agent.

Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.

To me, what philosophy does best is reflect on knowledge that's generated in other areas.

I am not a depressive person at all, but I reflect a lot on my life, and life in general, from the perspective of death.

The numbers are things I don't like to reflect on or look back on.

I would like us to think about it more explicitly, and not take our intuitions as the given of ethics, but rather to reflect on it, and be more open about the fact that something is an ethical issues and think what we ought to do about it.

Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.

My high school did not offer courses in philosophy, so the books that initially stimulated philosophical reflection in me were novels by Charles Dickens, Henry James, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.