Philosophy Quotes - Page 103

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.

It is easy to build a philosophy - it doesn't have to run

The singular point of beautiful objects, and people, is that they are experienced not as parts, or ratios between cheekbones and chin, but as wholes. The experience of beauty is a perception, but it is one that mixes up various other sensations and makes them converge in a particular way.

Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs.

I just want to be healthy and happy. I don't want to hurt anybody or make them mad. If that's a philosophy then that's my philosophy.

Life is a maze of doors and they all open from the side you're on. Just keep on pushing hard boy, try as you may, you're going to wind up where you started from.

[...] to introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity

In our hedonistic age, the Slow movement has a marketing ace up its sleeve: it peddles pleasure. The central tenet of the Slow philosophy is taking the time to do things properly, and thereby enjoy them more.

The blind spot for the in the Southern Progressive Movement - as for that matter in the national [progressive] movement - was the Negro, for the whole movement in the South coincided paradoxically with the crest of the wave of racism. Still more important to the association of the two movements was the fact that their leaders were often identical. In fact, the typical Progressive reformer rode to power in the South on a disenfranchising or white-supremacy movement.

[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.

As so often happens in philosophy, clever people accept a false general principle on a priori grounds and then devote endless labour and ingenuity to explaining away plain facts which obviously conflict with it.

The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers. Each of us emerges from the preconsciousness of babyhood and simply finds himself here, in it, in the world. That experience alone astonishes some people. What is all this - what is the world? And what are we? From the beginning of humanity some have been under a compulsion to ask these questions, and have felt a craving for the answers. This is what is really meant by any such phrase as 'mankind's need for metaphysics.'

I don't like purely philosophical works. I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish." - Lara, from Doctor Zhivago

The tree of life is growing where the spirit never dies, and the bright light of salvation shines in dark and empty skies.

The truth is far from you, so you know you got to lie. Then you're all the time defending what you can never justify.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

My father firmly embraced the Ralph Kramden philosophy: he was king of his Levittown castle. He worked hard, and his family deferred to his wishes. Except me. I did not defer and was disciplined accordingly.

We really are All One....this is the very philosophy that has kept me virtually anonymous in America for fifteen years.

Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.

Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

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.

The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading

Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.