Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Glorification of the 'natural' is part of the ideology which protects an unnatural society in its struggle against liberation.
A man's liberties are none the less aggressed upon because those who coerce him do so in the belief that he will be benefited.
The splendors of earth do not simply lie in their roles as human resources, supports of culture, or stimulators of experience.
The walking wounded, impaired in life and dissected in death, were our primary clues to where and how parts of the brain work.
Antonio Damasio is a distinguished neuroscientist with a flair for writing about science and an enthusiasm for philosophizing.
Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment. "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals" (1785)
Imagination is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.
Tools can rule men sooner than they expect; the plow makes man the lord of the garden but also the refugee from the dust bowl.
To love my neighbor is to assist the arising and unfolding in him of that which can harmonize the real elements of his nature.
Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so dam serious.
Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the of it is nothing other than the sense you choose.
I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.
Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn't let itself be extended it achieves significance only through its death.
Few authors understand themselves, and a proper reader must not only understand his author but also be able to see beyond him.
Authority that is not confirmed by true reason seems weak. Whereas true reason does not need to be confirmed by any authority.
When ideas float in our mind, without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call reverie.
To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality
The New Testament is of full authority and open to the understanding of simple men as to the points most needful to salvation.
Romantic poses aside, let us recognize that "falling in love"...is an inferior state of mind, a form of transitory imbecility.
Life is a struggle with things to maintain itself among them. Concepts are the strategic plan we form in answer to the attack.
One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.
History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.
All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy
The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error.
The highest virtue is not virtuous. Therefore it has virtue. The lowest virtue holds on to virtue. Therefore it has no virtue.
Only those who leisurely approach that which the masses are busy about can be busy about that which the masses take leisurely.
The standard of living of the common man is higher in those countries which have the greatest number of wealthy entrepreneurs.
In talking about equality and asking vehemently for its realization, nobody advocates a curtailment of his own present income.
I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.
Actions are divided as regards their object into four classes; they are either purposeless , unimportant , or vain , or good .
For there is assuredly nothing dearer to a man than wisdom, and though age takes away all else, it undoubtedly brings us that.
I depart from life as from an inn, and not as from my home. [Lat., Ex vita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo.]
The eyes, like sentinels, hold the highest place in the body. [Lat., Oculi, tanquam, speculatores, altissimum locum obtinent.]
Of all the rewards of virtue, . . . the most splendid is fame, for it is fame alone that can offer us the memory of posterity.
The well-known old remark of Cato, who used to wonder how two soothsayers could look one another in the face without laughing.
He is an eloquent man who can treat humble subjects with delicacy, lofty things impressively, and moderate things temperately.
'Til the infallibility of human judgements shall have been proved to me, I shall demand the abolition of the penalty of death.
Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.
The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way.
Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.
Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all - why not choose the I himself as beginning, middle, and end?
The gap between enthusiasm and indifference is filled with failures. The great man is he that does not lose his child's heart.
There are really exercises in a kind of consumerist ethic that I think don't have the same moral weight as medicine or health.
Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions- to define, classify, control, and regulate people.
More consequences for thought and action follow the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.
Death, that final evil, is one of the paths to eternity. Endless life in the conditions of our existence would be a nightmare.
I don't understand the notion that modern farming is anything do to with nature. It's a pretty gross interference with nature.
To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.
Experience proves that anyone who has studied geometry is infinitely quicker to grasp difficult subjects than one who has not.
There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman.