Only a philosopher’s mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.
Teaching the layperson (divulgare) is not distorting (tergiversare) the subject, but educating the public; and it is our duty as scientists to educate without distorting the essence of the scientific knowledge attained by humanity. The future of our society depends upon this premise.
Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it’s made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.
No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.
Olivier took a deep breath, then turned and bowed in farewell. Gersonides nodded in return, then thought of something.The manuscript you brought me, by that bishop. It argues that understanding is more important than movement. That action is virtuous only if it reflects pure comprehension, and that virtue comes from the comprehension, not the action.Olivier frowned. So?Dear boy, I must tell you a secret.What?I do believe it is wrong.
What we cannot bear removes us from life; what remains can be borne.
Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist.
Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.
I think when I was two years old in the sandbox. I think I formulated my basic philosophy there, and I haven’t really had to alter it very much ever since.
All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we’re afraid to teach them.
I read ‘The Conspiracy Against the Human Race’ and found it incredibly powerful writing. For me as a reader, it was less impactful as philosophy than as one writer’s ultimate confessional: an absolute horror story, where the self is the monster.
The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.
What you are is God’s gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.
Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
So ‘The Last Airbender’ ‘s philosophy and culture feels like a beautiful idea to me: That we inherently have connections to the elements and what they teach us, and to each other.
I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.
If you want the meaning of families and life and religion and philosophy rolled into one package, all you need to read is ‘The Brothers Karamazov.’
Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.
La memoria es como libro en el cual se escribe toda nuestra vida. Algunas veces deseamos cerrarlo y olvidarlo para no recordar todos los escabrosos detalles, y otras veces deseamos abrirlo y observarlo detenidamente, queriendo volver a sentir lo mismo que sentimos en aquel momento.
Where are we headed? Are we not endlessly plunging —backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there an up and a down anymore? Do we not wander as if through an endless nothingness? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Hasn’t it grown colder?
Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.
I studied the philosophy and the discipline of non-violence in Nashville as a student. And I staged a sitting-in in the fall of 1959 and got arrested the first time in February 1960.
The Obama doctrine of ignoring international issues and claiming it’s none of the U.S.’ business is a philosophy that has allowed Russia, Iran, and China to step up and take the lead.
All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral—both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.
An inventor is a man who asks ‘Why?’ of the universe and lets nothing stand between the answer and his mind.
And as I stumbled onto Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, it was the first time I had ever read any sort of philosophy that really made a tremendous amount of sense. What I liked that was missing from my experience of Christianity growing up was a sort of acceptance, a sort of being OK with being imperfect and not focusing on the sin.
I learned much more about acting from philosophy courses, psychology courses, history and anthropology than I ever learned in acting class.
No dirt can touch me, like an ocean, everything that comes to me becomes clean.
Someone once told me that the finer points of devotion are about the size of a pinhole, and there are millions of them. And if you could connect each dot, then you’ve got a diagram of what you think you thought you knew, and if you’re willing to admit that you know nothing…you have the blueprint for a breakthrough.
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched—they must be felt with the heart.
Why should we build our happiness on the opinions of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar.
There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.
The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice but that some things stay the same only by changing.
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature’s way.
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.
People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.
No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.
In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.” ~ Marcus Aurelius
Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?
When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval.
Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will—then your life will flow well.
How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?