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.
No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher.
Across the board… Not junkies or freaks, but people who were just as comfortable with drugs like weed, booze, or coke as we are – and we’re not weird, are we? Hell no, we’re just overworked professionals who need to relax now and then, have a bit of the whoop and the giggle, right?
I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind.
For the establishment, philosophy is both an elitist and an idealist discipline: In high school, it is a compulsory subject; at university, they teach the idealist line. They are conducting a conversation with themselves.
The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.’ ‘No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart’s beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?
I’ve always hated the “Who are you? question. This is a philosophical inquiry. Answering that question is why we’re on earth. You can’t answer it in thirty seconds or in an elevator.
Inevitably it follows that anyone with an independent mind must become ‘one who resists or opposes an authority or established convention’: a rebel. …And if enough people come to agree with—and follow—the REBEL, we now have a DEVIL. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have … GREATNESS.
I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn’t hold a stillborn aspiration. I’d want to have it, to make it, to live it.
Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I’m attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity.
Of all knowledge, the wise and good seek mostly to know themselves.
The basic philosophy of stoicism is that you have nothing real external to your own consciousness, that the only thing real is in fact your consciousness.
I believe our philosophy of conscious capitalism will eventually be widely adopted primarily because it is a better way to do business, and it creates more total value in the world for all of its stakeholders.
He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.’‘A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth,’ said the Savage promptly.‘Quite so…
The poet’s task is this, my friend, to read his dreams and comprehend. The truest human fancy seems to be revealed to us in dreams: all poems and versification are but true dreams’ interpretation.
Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth.
The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
Kita melahirkan dan dilahirkan oleh sebuah jiwa yang tidak kita kenalKita adalah teka-teki yang tak teterka oleh siapa pun. Kita adalah dongeng yang terperangkap dalam khayalannya sendiri.Kita adalah apa yang terus berjalan tanpa pernah tiba pada pengertian
My philosophy is really based on humility. I don’t think we know enough to fix either diagnostics or therapeutics. The future of psychiatry is clinical neuroscience, based on a much deeper understanding of the brain.
The chief benefit, which results from philosophy, arises in an indirect manner, and proceeds more from its secret, insensible influence, than from its immediate application.
An intelligent man is one who acknowledges his intelligence as that of those who surround him.
It’s not about whether or not someone is a bigot, but whether or not the argument which that someone is arguing is worth being a bigot about.
Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing for the known way is an impasse.
There isn’t an end point to excellence where you have it and you can stop. Being your best self means keeping on trying.
Saepe creat molles aspera spina rosas – Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses
An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. Can they be brought together? This is a practical question. We must get down to it. I despise intelligence really means: I cannot bear my doubts.
We are the inheritors of a wonderful world, a beautiful world, full of life and mystery, goodness and pain. But likewise are we the children of an indifferent universe. We break our own hearts imposing our moral order on what is, by nature, a wide web of chaos.
Barack Obama is an elegant and literate man with a cosmopolitan sense of the world. He is widely read in philosophy, literature, and history – as befits a former law professor – and he has shown time and again a surprising interest in contemporary fiction.
When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is ‘being offended’.
Imprisoning philosophy within the professionalizations and specializations of an institutionalized curriculum, after the manner of our contemporary European and North American culture, is arguably a good deal more effective in neutralizing its effects than either religious censorship or political terror
I am concerned, rather, that there should not be more things dreamt of in my philosophy than there actually are in heaven and earth.
I challenge anybody to say that I wouldn’t know how to approach foreign policy because, unlike some of the other people, I at least have a foreign policy philosophy, which is an extension of the Reagan philosophy. Peace through strength, and my philosophy is peace through strength and clarity.
There’s always, I guess, a philosophy that if you come in, you want to change all the parts, you want to change everything over. I’ve always tried to preach that consistency and continuity are very, very important. So if I know the baseball people, and I know they’re competent and could do the job, I don’t see any reason to replace them.
One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.
To establish that a rule is likely to be true, one must try to prove it false.
Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.
People do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.
I would absolutely like to play more leading roles. There’s no philosophy – well, the only philosophy, I suppose, is to try and do different things.
There are so many kinds of time. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. Or the big time, the time that raises mountains and makes stars. Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. Its hard to live in all those kinds of times. Easy to forget that you live in all of them.
In the ancient times, bards went around singing the epics, which were storehouses of philosophy.
Common man’s patience will bring him more happiness than common man’s power.
Democracy may have arisen in the West as the way of striving for the universal aspiration to dignity and freedom, but it isn’t alien to the underlying concepts that infuse religion and moral philosophy everywhere.
It is when those who are not strong enough have made some moderate amount of progress that they fail and give up…
Much of what Karl Popper contributed to the philosophy of science has now passed into mainstream thought, into the currency of that nebulous, tricky ontology known as ‘common sense.’
To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.
You must remember, my own philosophy is that you don’t belong only to yourself. You have an obligation to the society which protected you when you were brought into the world, which taught you, which supported you and nurtured you. You have an obligation to repay it.
The art of leaving things alone. Especially when the seas of public or personal life are stormiest. There are whirlwinds in the affairs of men, tempests of the will, and it makes good sense to retire and wait things out in a safe harbour… Let nature or morality take its course.
The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.
A sign of a lover of wisdom is his delight in not running his mouth about things he doesn’t know.
There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.
Furthermore, in the 13th/19th century philosophy began to see itself as a complete replacement for religion as one can see in the rise of the very idea of ideology at that time, a term used widely today even by Muslims who rarely realize the essentially secular and anti-religious character of the very concept of ideology which has gradually come to replace traditional religion in so many circles.
Nothing seems to me more doubtful than Aristotle’s remark that it is probable the arts and philosophy have several times been discovered and several times lost.
Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.