Philosophy Quotes - Page 80

The task of the political philosopher can only be to influence public opinion, not to organize people for action. He will do so effectively only if he is not concerned with what is now politically possible but consistently defends the "general principles which are always the same." In this sense I doubt whether there can be such a thing as a conservative political philosophy. Conservatism may often be a useful practical maxim, but it does not give us any guiding principles which can influence long-range developments.

I have said my philosophy - I'm a backyard philosopher, I guess - is that the dirtiest word in the English language is "retirement."

Only by zealously guarding the rights of the most humble, the most unorthodox, and the most despised among us can freedom flourish and endure in our land.

The philosophy I shared... was one of ambition - ambition to succeed, ambition to grow, ambition to move forward - backed up by hard work.

Irreverence is a most necessary ingredient of religion. Not to speak of its importance in philosophy. Irreverence is the only way left to us for testing our universe.

We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible.

In fact, philosophy is universal in scope. No man can live without a world view; therefore, there is no man who is not a philosopher.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real. Vedantic philosophy... has sought to clarify it by a number of analogies, one of the most attractive being the many-faceted crystal which, while showing hundreds of little pictures of what is in reality a single existent object, does not really multiply that object.

Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak.

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.

The triumph of the philosophy of Atheism is to free man from the nightmare of gods; it means the dissolution of the phantoms of the beyond.

For a long time it has been known that the first systems of representations with which men have pictured to themselves the world and themselves were of religious origin. There is no religion that is not a cosmology at the same time that it is a speculation upon divine things. If philosophy and the sciences were born of religion, it is because religion began by taking the place of the sciences and philosophy.

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle.

I'm a thousand miles from nowhere, time don't matter to me. I'm a thousand miles from nowhere and there's not place that I want to be.

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

It seems then, say I, that you leave politics entirely out of the question, and never suppose, that a wise magistrate can justly be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy, such as those of Epicurus, which, denying a divine existence, and consequently a providence and a future state, seem to loosen, in a great measure, the ties of morality, and may be supposed, for that reason, pernicious to the peace of civil society.

And as this is the obvious appearance of things, it must be admitted, till some hypothesis be discovered, which by penetrating deeper into human nature, may prove the former affections to be nothing but modifications of the latter. All attempts of this kind have hitherto proved fruitless, and seem to have proceeded entirely from that love of simplicity which has been the source of much false reasoning in philosophy.

Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.

While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

I have a social philosophy; you have political opinions; he has an ideology.

Revenge is good. It's what separates us from the animals and the hippies.

Can there be in our age any peace that is not honorable, any war that is not dishonorable?

All the progress we have made in philosophy ... is the result of that methodical skepticism which is the element of human freedom.