Philosophical Quotes - Page 15

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.

Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

For the anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility of every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities and talents with which nature has endowed them, and turn them to social account.

The intelligentsia ...was kept busy embroidering white stitches on the philosophical and ecclesiastical vestments of the bourgeoisie - that old and filthy fabric besmeared with the blood of toiling masses.

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

Wisdom is learning what to overlook.

The environmental crisis has deep spiritual, philosophical, and religious roots and causes. It is not merely the result of bad engineering.

Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It's like aspirin. You can't use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.

It's only when I say that everything is incomprehensible that I come as close as possible to understanding the only thing it is given to us to understand.

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.

The art we need is the art of bearing the unbearable.

The obligations of law and equity reach only to mankind; but kindness and beneficence should be extended to the creatures of every species, and these will flow from the breast of a true man, as streams that issue from the living fountain.

The possible ranks higher than the actual.

Philosophy is a necessary activity because we, all of us, take a great number of things for granted, and many of these assumptions are of a philosophical character; we act on them in private life, in politics, in our work, and in every other sphere of our lives -- but while some of these assumptions are no doubt true, it is likely, that more are false and some are harmful. So the critical examination of our presuppositions -- which is a philosophical activity -- is morally as well as intellectually important.

Indiana Jones: Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. ... So forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and "X" never, ever marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Our affections as well as our bodies are in perpetual flux.