Philosophical Quotes - Page 35

The face is the soul of the body.

Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.

Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness or judicial research. They are instruments of a practical nature, founded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings.

When our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.

Our goal is to try to bring a calm and simplicity to what are incredibly complex problems so that you're not aware really of the solution.

Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.

There was a time in our past when one could walk down any street and be surrounded by harmonious buildings. Such a street wasn't perfect, it wasn't necessarily even pretty, but it was alive. The old buildings smiled, while our new buildings are faceless. The old buildings sang, while the buildings of our age have no music in them.

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.

Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts ; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.

Men who are lovers of wisdom [i.e., philosophers] must be inquirers into many things.

It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do?

Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.

We come to recognize that playfulness, as a philosophical stance, can be very serious indeed; and moreover, that it possesses an unfailing capacity to arouse ridicule and hostility in those among us who crave certainty, reverence, and restraint.

Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

The unphilosophical and philosophical attitudes can be very sharply distinguished (with scarcely any intermediate forms) by the fact that the first accepts everything that happens as regards its general form, and finds occasion for surprise only in that special content by which something that happens here today differs from what happened there yesterday; whereas for the second, it is precisely the common features of all experience, such as characterise everything we encounter, which are the primary and most profound occasion for astonishment.

If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.

Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things, and thence proceed to greater.

When you take a photo at 1/1000 of a second, the moment can become an eternal fact, an eternal moment. So we have a philosophical problem of objectivity and subjectivity.

The law always limits every power it gives.

Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived.