Philosophy Quotes - Don't explain your Philosophy
“I
would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
―
Bertrand Russell
“Don't
explain your philosophy. Embody it.”
―
Epictetus
“He
suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God
split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one
another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
―
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“For,
after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of
gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the
external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable –
what then?”
―
George Orwell, 1984
“A
person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and
able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for
sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not
acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has
remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely,
powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and
his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though
he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his
"normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that
results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather
than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt
himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis,
i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms
will cure themselves.”
―
Erich fromm, The Art of Being
“The
best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
―
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“I
have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't
agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful
it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how
beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a
dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty
that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I
may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the
beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he
sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which
also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one
centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure,
also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to
attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see
the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the
lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the
science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a
flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”
―
Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of
Richard P. Feynman
“Maybe
each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those
inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from
person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be
talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some
more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic?
Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with
reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from
ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The
problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently,
there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness.”
―
Philip K. Dick
“One
of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up
being governed by your inferiors.”
―
Plato
“The
flame that burns Twice as bright burns half as long.”
―
Lao Tzu, Te-Tao Ching
“Non
est ad astra mollis e terris via" - "There is no easy way from the
earth to the stars”
―
Seneca
“If
you understand others you are smart.
If
you understand yourself you are illuminated.
If
you overcome others you are powerful.
If
you overcome yourself you have strength.
If
you know how to be satisfied you are rich.
If
you can act with vigor, you have a will.
If
you don't lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.
If
you die without loss, you are eternal.”
―
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“No!
Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”
―
George Lucas, The Star Wars Trilogy
“The
first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men
he has around him.”
―
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
“It
does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have
gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive
vibration you have radiated in life that matters,”
―
Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations
“Doubt
as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared
even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by
a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least
ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one
perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest
impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that
the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded
as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song
over the waves in which reason has drowned.”
―
Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
“Things
do not change; we change.”
―
henry david thoreau, Walden
“Man
is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself
from them.”
―
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“People
know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they
don't know is what they do does.”
―
Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of
Reason
“The
most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all
comprehensible.”
―
Albert Einstein
