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I do a lot of reading on Buddhist philosophy, and a Buddhist nun named Pema Chödrön talks a lot about acceptance. It's one of the main tenets of Buddhism - accepting that what is, is. The root of our suffering is when we just don't want to accept a truth. We want something to be different than it is.
The biblical writers didn't need to say everything; they could assume some things. They didn't anticipate a day when even Jews and Christians would fall under influences of non-biblical religions, philosophies, and worldviews, to the extent that is now the case in our pluralistic culture and society.
The one philosophy or religion I find I am most close to is the Buddhist one. I think it is the one that respects others and the one that doesn't say that this is the only way. I think happiness is the moment when - if you've forgotten those little things - they suddenly come back into focus for you.
The world is not prepared yet to understand the philosophy of Occult Sciences - let them assure themselves first of all that there are beings in an invisible world, whether 'Spirits' of the dead or Elementals; and that there are hidden powers in man, which are capable of making a God of him on earth.
Ah, the camel of Cairo! ... He went quietly and comfortably through the narrowest lanes and the densest crowds by the mere force of his personality. He was the most impressive living thing we saw in Egypt, not excepting two Pashas and a Bey. He was engaged with large philosophies, one could see that.
I do not claim to have any developed or sophisticated views in political philosophy, but I think that one of the lessons of the last few hundred years of history is that the greatest threat to human prosperity and well-being is fanaticism and intolerance, even in the name of apparently laudable goals.
I do not believe that a moral philosophy can ever be founded on a scientific basis. … The valuation of life and all its nobler expressions can only come out of the soul’s yearning toward its own destiny. Every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formulas must fail. Of that I am perfectly convinced.
Other people are likely not to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be troubled when that came for which they had all along been eagerly practicing.
Leibniz believed in freedom, both divine and human, and he thought that contingency was a necessary condition of freedom. That is, if an agent A acts freely when choosing X, then A's choosing X cannot be necessary. But there are some elements in his philosophy that seem to make contingency impossible.
Indeed, I suspect that the changes that have taken place during the last century in the average man's fundamental beliefs, in his philosophy, in his conception of religion, in his whole world outlook, are greater than the changes that occurred during the preceding four thousand years all put together.
The spirit of philosophy is one of free inquiry. It suspects all authority. Its function is to trace the uncritical assumptions of human thought to their hiding places, and in this pursuit it may finally end in denial or a frank admission of the incapacity of pure reason to reach the ultimate reality.
The unprecedented success of Keynesianism is due to the fact that it provides an apparent justification for the 'deficit spending' policies of contemporary governments. It is the pseudo-philosophy of those who can think of nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations.
Philosophy does provide me a structure and a way of thinking. Religion - like the religion I grew up with, Mormonism - also provides a way of thinking. And I think those two structures - one highly logical, the other anything but - are always part of my thought process as I'm putting together a story.
The Society or Fraternity of Freemasons is more in the nature of a system of Philosophy or of moral and social virtues taught by symbols, allegories, and lectures based upon fundamental truths, the observance of which tends to promote stability of character, conservatism, morality and good citizenship.
There is one common philosophy, one thing that you can do no matter who you are or what you look like: You can actually get passionate instead of remaining cool or instead of trying to look like everybody else. You can - you must - immerse yourself passionately in who you are if you want to have style.
For every Book of Job, there's a Book of Leviticus, featuring some of the most boring prose ever written. But if you were stranded on a desert island, what book would better reward long study? And has there ever been a more beautiful distillation of existential philosophy than the Book of Ecclesiastes?
My experience with forgiveness is that it sort of comes spontaneously at a certain point and to try to force it it's not really forgiveness. It's Buddhist philosophy or something spiritual jargon that you're trying to live up to but you're just using it against yourself as a reason why you're not okay.
As I grew up I became increasingly interested in philosophy, or which [his family] profoundly disapproved. Everytime the subject came up they repeated with unfailing regularity, "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind." After some fifty or sixty repititions, this remark ceased to amuse me.
I think . . . that philosophy has the duty of pointing out the falsity of outworn religious ideas, however estimable they may be as a form of art. We cannot act as if all religion were poetry while the greater part of it still functions in its ancient guise of illicit science and backward morals. . . .
When I started to get disillusioned with psychoanalysis I reread philosophy and was reminded of the constructivist notion that Epictetus had proposed 2,000 years ago: "People are disturbed not by events that happen to them, but by their view of them." I could see how that applied to many of my clients.
But, lady, as women, what wisdom may be ours if not the philosophies of the kitchen? Lupercio Leonardo spoke well when he said: 'how well one may philosophize when preparing dinner.' And I often say, when observing these trivial details: had Aristotle prepared vituals [sic], he would have written more.
Hegel's philosophy is so odd that one would not have expected him to be able to get sane men to accept it, but he did. He set it out with so much obscurity that people thought it must be profound. It can quite easily be expounded lucidly in words of one syllable, but then its absurdity becomes obvious.
I have been curious about the mind and body for as long as I can remember. I was a gymnast, a ballet dancer, and a philosophy and physical therapy major. Following the thread of curiosity about mind and body, I took my first yoga class in 1980 and knew from the start that it would be a lifelong passion.
Permaculture is not the movement of sustainability and it is not the philosophy behind it; it is the problem-solving approach the movement and the philosophy can use to meet their goals and design a world in which human needs are met while enhancing the health of this miraculous planet that supports us.
What is peddled about nowadays as philosophy, especially that of N.S. [National Socialism], but has nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of that movement [namely the encounter between global technology and modern humanity] is nothing but fishing in that troubled sea of values and totalities.
That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.
It was like discovering that your innermost fires and terrors, the things you believed no one else could fathom, were in fact the basis of a recognized philosophy. Some part of you felt intimately invaded, threatened; some other part fell to its knees and sobbed in gratitude that it was no longer alone.
Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror
We have a small faction, and they are a minority, who believe they are there to govern. Then there is the majority of us who believe that indeed we are there to govern but more importantly we are there to be an opposition to the Democratic philosophy and the only way to do that is through confrontation.
All things that are living are expression and therefore part of the inherent symbology of life. Art, therefore, that is encumbered with excessive symbolism is extraneous, and from my point of view, useless art. Anyone who understands life needs no handbook of poetry or philosophy to tell him what it is.
I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts. I have never, not even once, acted on the basis of any doctrine or philosophy.I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world.
Men have gone on to build up vast intellectual schemes, philosophies, and theologies, to prove that ideals are not real as ideals but as antecedently existing actualities. They have failed to see that in converting moral realities into matters of intellectual assent they have evinced lack of moral faith.
Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges... And the greatest eulogy we can give it, for exchange is an admirable transaction, in which two contracting parties always both gain; consequently, society is an uninterrupted succession of advantages, unceasingly renewed for all its members.
In my book, 'The Big Three in Economics,' I found that the press has frequently and prematurely written the obituary of Adam Smith and his free-market philosophy, only to see a new and more vibrant global marketplace reemerge after being savagely attacked by Keynesians, Marxists, and assorted socialists.
We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.
In late modernity we grow more and more accustomed to politicians and public figures who are indebted to their appetites for their "values," to their intellectual sloth for their "principles," to their rhetorical cleverness for their "conscience," and to their regimented conformism for their "philosophy."
The philosophy of chiropractic is founded upon the knowledge of the manner in which a vital functions are performed by innate in health and disease. When the controlling intelligence is able to transmit mental impulses to all parts of the body, free and unobstructed, we have normal action which is health.
My parents spent an awful lot of money sending me to the best possible schools, and I came out of my exams and thought, 'I don't really want to do a degree.' I did philosophy with the Jesuits for about a year, and then I joined a bank. While I was there, I saw an ad in an Irish paper for radio announcers.
I wrote The Philosophy of Disenchantment, which is, I think, the gloomiest and worst book ever published. Out of sheer laziness, I then produced a history of atheism, The Anatomy of Negation, which has been honored by international dislike. Need I state that of all my children it is the one that I prefer?
The philosopher of science is not much interested in the thought processes which lead to scientific discoveries; he looks for a logical analysis of the completed theory, including the establishing its validity. That is, he is not interested in the context of discovery, but in the context of justification.
I don't believe there's anything in life you can't go back and fix. The ancient Vedas - the oldest Hindu philosophy - and modern science agree that time is an illusion. If that's true, there's no such thing as a past or a future - it's all one huge now. So what you fix now affects the past and the future.
I hold all knowledge that is concerned with things that actually exist - all that is commonly called Science - to be of very slight value compared to the knowledge which, like philosophy and mathematics, is concerned with ideal and eternal objects, and is freed from this miserable world which God has made.
Plotinus, when he thinks about mind or intellect, the Greek word is 'nous', he thinks about something that's very different, it's much more elevated and special, more abstract, you might say more philosophical than the very broad range of mental events that we talk about in contemporary philosophy of mind.
Our philosophy is that we want to be an ecosystem. Our philosophy is to empower others to sell, empower others to service, making sure the other people are more powerful than us. With our technology, our innovation, our partners - 10 million small business sellers - they can compete with Microsoft and IBM.
I have a personal philosophy in life: If somebody else can do something that I'm doing, they should do it. And what I want to do is find things that would represent a unique contribution to the world-the contribution that only I, and my portfolio of talents, can make happen. Those are my priorities in life.
To mix science up with philosophy is only to produce a philosophy that has lost all its ideal value and a science that has lost all its practical value. It is for my private physician to tell me whether this or that food will kill me. It is for my private philosopher to tell me whether I ought to be killed.
When I first began studying philosophy, a good deal of what went on in analytic epistemology was focused on addressing the Gettier problem. At first, I became quite caught up in it, and the kind of analytical ingenuity required for the work appealed to me. After a while, however, I started to lose interest.
I have no patience with this dreadful idea that whatever you have in you has to come out, that you can't suppress true talent. People can be destroyed; they can be bent, distorted, and completely crippled. In spite of all the poetry, all the philosophy to the contrary, we are not really masters of our fate.
Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too - ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring earth.
No one can stop or control your thought process or your thinking. You can think anything you want. But that doesn't seem to be the point. The thinking process has to be directed into a certain approach... not in accord with certain dogma, philosophy, or concepts. Instead, one has to know the thinker itself.