Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm actually with the classics in general in terms of understanding truth in an existential mode. Therefore, philosophy becomes more a way of life as opposed to simply a mode of discourse.
I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions.
What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound. That is what it means to fly upside down.
I would say the soul would be more than the engine. The soul would be like the computer system that coordinates everything, from the smog device to the fuel injection system to the brakes.
Anyway, there is a lot of really interesting work going on in the neuroscience and psychology of consciousness, and I would love to see philosophers become more closely involved with this.
The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.
The community that stands behind a culture as a comprehensively productive personality must be so extensive that in it, to a certain degree, all partialities balance out and work together.
Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity.
It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.
When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom — freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.
Let us ... quietly accept our times, with the firm conviction that just as much good can be done today as at any time in the past, provided only that we have the will and the way to do it.
By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.
Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each to take form in the mind of the other, and this picture evidently is in reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship.
It strikes everyone in beginning to form an acquaintance with the treasures of Indian literature that a land so rich in intellectual products and those of the profoundest order of thought.
From my own being, and from the dependency I find in myself and my ideas, I do, by an act of reason, necessarily infer the existence of a God, and of all created things in the mind of God.
The great desire of this age is for a doctrine which may serve to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that conduct may really be the consequence of belief
The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested, compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
In the era of imperialism, businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed as statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of succcessful businessmen.
Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.
If man was the relative of animals, then animals were the relatives of man, and in degrees bearers of that inwardness of which man, the most advanced of their kin, is conscious in himself.
The strains and stresses suffered by the individual in society are grounded in the normal functioning of that society (and of the individual!) rather than in its disturbances and diseases.
Every moral teacher or spiritual adviser gives injunctions about how to live wisely and well. But life is so complicated and full of uncertainty that rules seldom tell us quite what to do.
Dolomite is a whole mess of stuff, a mixture. It gets characterised as 'a stuff' because of the interest of oil geologists. It would have been a nonentity were it not for its applications.
The proving power of the intellect or the senses was questioned by the skeptics more than two thousand years ago; but they were browbeaten into confusion by the glory of Newtonian physics.
School is an institution built on the axiom that learning is the result of teaching. And institutional wisdom continues to accept this axiom, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.
No matter what God's power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of the absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on our human level and limits himself.
Each person is sacred, no matter what his or her culture, religion, handicap, or fragility. Each person is created in God’s image; each one has a heart, a capacity to love and to be loved.
Women speak at an earlier age, more easily, and more agreeably than men; they are accused also of speaking more; this is as it should be, and I willingly change the reproach into a eulogy.
It is always a poor way of reading the hearts of others to try to conceal our own. [Fr., C'est toujours un mauvais moyen de lire dans le coeur des autres que d'affecter de cacher le sien.]
Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher.
A being whose activities are associated with others has a social environment. What he does and what he can do depend upon the expectations, demands, approvals, and condemnations of others.
Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.
Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.
The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind - the lower animals.
The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar; particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England
If opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skillful devil's advocate can conjure up.
"The people" aren't running anything. That's why technology has replaced politics as the source of ideology. The ideological claims are hollow and absurd, and nobody believes them anymore.
Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect; they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.
The individual produces an object and, by consuming it, returns to himself, but returns as a productive and self reproducing individual. Consumption thus appears as a moment of production.
Don't imagine that you'll discover {the truth} by accumulating more knowledge. Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge. You can't get full eating this way.
Do nondoing, strive for non-stiving, savor the flavourless, make much of little, repay enmity with virture; plan for difficulty when it is still easy, do the great while it is still small.
The world's beginning is its mother. To have found the mother is also to know the children. Although you know the children, cling to the mother. Until your last day you will not be harmed.
The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.
All this is applicable to the intellectual faculties of man. There is a considerable difference between one person and another as regards these faculties, as is well known to philosophers.
It is not easy to distinguish between true and false affection, unless there occur one of those crises in which, as gold is tried by fire, so a faithful friendship may be tested by danger.
All the electronic devices are weakening the social bonds. Sociologists and psychologists should study this serious threat instead of repeating that communication is the cement of society.