Philosophical Quotes - Page 61

Nothing lasts and yet nothing passes either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.

Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage all around. Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering on them.

Chinese were bornwith an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them.... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.

One of things about beards is that, when men reach a certain age, they'd like to see if they can grow one. It's a phenomenon I understand very well. After you get over the itchy face, you go, "Oh, I don't have to shave, that's cool." And then you move into the philosophical thing- people say, "You look weird, you have a beard." And you say, "No, actually, it's weird to shave." Having a beard is natural. When you think about it, shaving it off is quite weird.

A pleasant natural environment is a good - a luxury good, philosophical good, a moral goody-good, a good time for all. Whatever, we want it. If we want something, we should pay for it, with our labor or our cash. We shouldn't beg it, steal it, sit around wishing for it, or euchre the government into taking it by force.

Of the opinions of philosophy I most gladly embrace those that are most solid, that is to say, most human and most our own; my opinions, in conformity with my conduct, are low and humble.

To philosophize is to learn to die.

God is nearer to me than I am to myself; He is just as near to wood and stone, but they do not know it.

Death itself is a natural occurrence, it is unavoidable, and the Stoics thought that part of philosophical practice is to get comfortable with the unavoidable, learning to face it with courage.

In philosophy, the principles are more interesting than the examples. In literature, the examples are more interesting than the principles.

When appearance and reality coincide, philosophy and literary criticism find themselves with nothing to say.

The grandeur of a philosophy does not certify its truth.

Modern thought does not offer consolations, but upsets.

But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.

In the next few galactic seconds, the fate of the universe will be decided. Life - the ultimate experiment - will either explode into space, and engulf the star-clouds in a fire storm of children, trees, and butterfly wings; or Life will fail, fizzle, and gutter out, leaving the universe shrouded forever in impenetrable blankness, devoid of hope.

The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.

Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill-will against all that lives. It therefore embraces even sub-human life, not excluding noxious insects and beasts. They have not been created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator, we should find their proper place in His creation.

I still believe that man, not having been given the power of creation, does not posses the right of destroying the meanest creature that lives. The perogative of destruction belongs solely to the Creator of all that lives.

Though philosophical Hinduism has no other god but God, it cannot be denied that practical Hinduism is not so emphatically uncompromising as Islam.

Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others.

A main cause of philosophical disease-an unbalanced diet: one nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of example.

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them--as steps--to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the whole world aright.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

The more I go into I, the more I fall out of I.

Philosophy still moves too much straight ahead, and is not yet cyclical enough.