Quotes Tagged "philosophy"

For me, writing is immortality. It is wisdom. It is never-ending.

Theology, philosophy, metaphysics, and quantum physics are merely ways for God to have his smart people believe in him

To sum it all up, the [Ayn] Rand belief system looks like this: 1. Facts are facts: things can be absolutely right or absolutely wrong, as determined by reason. 2. According to my reasoning, I am absolutely right. 3. Charity is immoral. 4. Pay for your own fucking schools.

I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.

It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.

A scientist may not be sure of the answer, but he's often sure he can find one. And that's a condition which is clearly not enjoyed by philosophy.

In the liquid amber within the ivory porcelain, the initiated may touch the sweet reticence of Confucius, the piquancy of Laotse, and the ethereal aroma of Sakyamuni himself.

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.

In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg. Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?

If the rest of your brain were conscious, it would probably regard you as the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert

By the time we began to understand enough about what the world to ask the right questions, our visit is over, and someone else is visiting, asking the same questions.

Civilization is only possible for deeply unpleasant animals. It is only an ape that can be truly civilized.

Action is the activity of the rational soul, which abhors irrationality and must combat it or be corrupted by it. When it sees the irrationality of others, it must seek to correct it, and can do this either by teaching or engaging in public affairs itself, correcting through its practice. And the purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone, they become no more than beasts.

You cannot be buried in obscurity: you are exposed upon a grand theater to the view of the world. If your actions are upright and benevolent, be assured they will augment your power and happiness.

Laughter is the antidote to existential pain

Islam deals not only with what man must and must not do, but also with what he needs to know. In other words, Islam is both a way of acting and doing things and a way of knowing.

Kitalah planet yang hidup itu, Sophie! Kitalah kapal besar yang berlayar mengelilingi matahari yang membakar alam raya. Tapi kita masing-masing adalah juga sebuah kapal bermuatan gen-gen yang melayari kehidupan. Jika kita sudah membawa muatan ini dengan selamat ke pelabuhan berikut --berarti hidup kita tidak sia-sia.

Wisdom is seeing something in a non-habitual manner.

The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.

To the untutored sage, the concentration of population was the prolific mother of all evils, moral no less than physical. He argued that food is good, while surfeit kills; that love is good, but lust destroys; and not less dreaded than the pestilence following upon crowded and unsanitary dwellings was the loss of spiritual power inseparable from too close contact with one's fellow-men.