Philosophical Quotes - Page 37

The arts teach and moralise by their beauty alone, not by translating a philosophical or social formula. For the truly artistic person, painting has itself as it's purpose, which is quite enough.

Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know.

Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason.

The spirit of Plato dies hard. We have been unable to escape the philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure in the world is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying reality.

Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us - but not suckle us.

Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.

There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich.

For greed, all nature is too little.

To be able to endure odium is the first art to be learned by those who aspire to power.

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.

Evolution is a theory in a special philosophical sense of science, but in terms of ordinary laymen's use of language, it's a fact, .. Evolution is a fact in the same sense that it's a fact that the Earth is round and not flat, [that] the Earth goes round the Sun. Both those are also theories, but they're theories that have never been disproved and never will be disproved.

Man cannot be enlightened through any organization, creed, dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through understanding the contents of his own mind, through observation, not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.

Science is nothing but perception.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

What is honored in a country will be cultivated there.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

We are so far from knowing all the forces of nature and their various modes of action that it would be unworthy of the philosopher to deny phenomena simply because they are inexplicable at the present state of our knowledge. The more difficult it is to acknowledge their existence, the greater the care with which we must study these phenomena.

One could say that what differentiates ancient from modern philosophy is the fact that, in ancient philosophy, it was not only Chrysippus or Epicurus who, just because they had developed a philosophical discourse, were considered philosophers. Rather, every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus was every bit as much a philosopher as they.

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

It is with extreme sadness that we hear of the passing of the leader of the world's Catholics, His Holiness Pope John Paul II, who commanded the three paths of religious learning, philosophical thought and poetical and artistic creativity.

Philosophical discussions habitually make men happy and joyful not frowning and sad.

Philosophy attempts, not to discover new truths about the world, but to gain a clear view of what we already know and believe about it. That depends upon attaining a more explicit grasp of the structure of our thoughts; and that in turn on discovering how to give a systematic account of the working of language, the medium in which we express our thoughts.