Philosophy
Quotes - Hard Times create strong Men
“This
is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated
philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is
kindness.”
―
Dalai Lama XIV, The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings
By and About the Dalai Lama
“Take
it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before,
bugs in amber.”
―
Kurt Vonnegut
“I
think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which
might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different
degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of
anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether
it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I
don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious
universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can
tell.”
―
Richard P. Feynman
“Hard
times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak
men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G.
Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain
“There
are no ordinary moments.”
―
Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives
“If
you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he
happens to bite it off.”
―
Agatha Christie
“Don’t
only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and
knowledge can raise men to the divine.”
―
Ludwig van Beethoven
“Chiron
had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. “No man
is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”
“But
what if he is your friend?” Achilles had asked him, feet kicked up on the wall
of the rose-quartz cave. “Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a
stranger?”
“You
ask a question that philosophers argue over,” Chiron had said. “He is worth
more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else’s friend and brother. So
which life is more important?”
We
had been silent. We were fourteen, and these things were too hard for us. Now
that we are twenty-seven, they still feel too hard.
He
is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is
all that will remain. It is his child, his dearest self. Should I reproach him
for it? I have saved Briseis. I cannot save them all.
I
know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer.
Whichever you choose, you are wrong.”
―
Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
“It's
no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all
your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But
you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all
your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come.
But they've got to come. You can't force them.”
―
D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
“A
great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging
their prejudices.”
―
William James
“She
said, "It's not life or death, the labyrinth."
"Um,
okay. So what is it?"
"Suffering,"
she said. "Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the
problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How
do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?... Nothing's wrong. But there's
always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives
far away when there's a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is
universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all
worried about.”
―
John Green, Looking for Alaska
“All
knowledge is worth having.”
―
Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart
“The
evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good
intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”
―
Albert Camus
“The
so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of
absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it
makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different
form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.
Less
well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the
disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who
are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the
onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance
with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should
always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can
counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion,
suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to
suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they
are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by
denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational
argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the
use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of
tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any
movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should
consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way
as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival
of the slave trade, as criminal.”
―
Karl Raimund Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies
“But
the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are
laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they
laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
―
Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science
“When
a man learns to love, he must bear the risk of hatred.”
―
Uchiha Madara
“No
single event can awaken within us a stranger whose existence we had never
suspected. To live is to be slowly born.”
―
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight To Arras
“If
you're trapped in the dream of the Other, you're fucked.”
―
Gilles Deleuze
“I
think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout
the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones,
almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than
you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.”
―
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
