Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.
Time cannot put anything in your hands until you let go off the time.
You were born a child of light’s wonderful secret— you return to the beauty you have always been.
We grown-up people think that we appreciate music, but if we realized the sense that an infant has brought with it of appreciating sound and rhythm, we would never boast of knowing music. The infant is music itself.
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
You can be creative in anything – in math, science, engineering, philosophy – as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance.
Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.
Writing is the spectrum through which the chaos of life can be seen, studied and understood.
As the new spirituality begins to become the pervasive spirituality of the planet, we’ll find that we have abandoned our philosophy of contradictions in which we say we’re all one but continue to try to win.
A thing is only as great as the amount a person is willing to risk for it. If you are not willing to risk anything, then the thing mustn’t be so great at all.
I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us.
Bring the mind into sharp focus and make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere. The mind must be emancipated from old habits, prejudices, restrictive thought processes and even ordinary thought itself.
I never supported violence. Before the formation of TMC, I was a member of the Congress Party. Gandhi’s Congress. Non-violence is a philosophy that runs deep.
The speculative object and the practical object of philosophy as Naturalism, science and pleasure, coincide on this point: it is always a matter of denouncing the illusion, the false infinite, the infinity of religion and all of the theologico-erotic-oneiric myths in which it is expressed.
Philosophy is at its most engaged when it is impure. What is being recovered from the Ancient Greek model is not some lost idea of philosophy’s pure essence, but the idea that philosophy is mixed up with everything else.
Those who are wise won’t be busy, and those who are too busy can’t be wise.
It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.
It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine.
We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.
With a background in science I am extremely interested in the meeting ground of science, theology, and philosophy, especially the ethical questions at the border of science and theology.
A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both.
Our faith is stronger than death, our philosophy is firmer than flesh, and the spread of the Kingdom of God upon the earth is more sublime and more compelling.
What is familiar is what we are used to; and what we are used to is most difficult to ‘Know’ – that is, to see as a problem; that is, to see as strange, as distant, as ‘outside us’.
I enjoy getting things done. My philosophy is the edge, the edge of something. There’s where we have to go in local government, in not only the philosophy but the creativity in people around you. They have to go to the edge.
The real question of life after death isn’t whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.
They lived like monkeys still, while their new god powers lay around them in the weeds.
Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me — indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm — and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.
Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love.
[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.
Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.
What does it matter where my body happens to be?’ he said. ‘My mind goes on working all the same.
Flow with whatever may happen, and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change… and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.
Well, I think that Augusta is not the same golf course that I grew up on. Bobby Jones’ philosophy was giving you space off the tee; if you put it in the right side of the fairway, you ended up getting the right angle to the green.
The violence had broken out in both sides, but our philosophy as a party was very, very clear.
You not only are hunted by others, you unknowingly hunt yourself.
Sure, I could tell you I am no longer a lesbian or that I am no longer attracted to women and am straight, or I could even tell you the moon is made of cheese. I could tell you many things, but the moon will still not be made of cheese, and I will still not be attracted to men.
For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?
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.
God created philosophy for all the intellects that got bored of hearing the same bible stories every Sunday.
A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one.
Philosophy is a root of science. Science is a branch of a philosophical tree.
We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing, a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use.
One has to seek out pleasurable sensations, in the absence of which blandness comes naturally. The upshot of this is that we must continually work at keeping suffering (including tedium) at bay, and we can do so only imperfectly. Dissatisfaction does and must pervade life. There are moments, perhaps even periods, of satisfaction, but they occur against a background of dissatisfied striving.
We live in deeds not years In thoughts not breaths In feelings not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.
Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable.
The old man slowly raised himself from the piano stool, fixed those cheerful blue eyes piercingly and at the same time with unimaginable friendliness upon him, and said: Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends. There is none easier. That is a fine thing. I hope you and I shall remain friends. Perhaps you too will learn how to make fugues, Joseph.
I’m always a big fan of if you approach somebody politely about something and you’re not a nudge – you’re just pretty honest and simple, my kind of philosophy is that I’m not afraid of ‘no,’ and that’s way different than ‘I won’t take no for an answer.’
If the rest of your brain were conscious, it would probably regard you as the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert
; the man who does not understand a woman is happy to replace his subjective deficiency with an objective resistance; instead of admitting his ignorance, he recognizes the presence of a mystery exterior to himself: here is an excuse that flatters his laziness and vanity at the same time.
I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man’s guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.
My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.
Let people be the pursuits of happiness, you be the pursuit of perfection.
My philosophy is, don’t take no for an answer and be willing to sacrifice your entire project for freedom.
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.
‘Dreamsongs’ allows me to show the scope of my writing – with personal commentary that puts the works in context and includes some autobiographical details intended to reveal how each piece came to be, what it represents, and how it has formed, or been informed by, my philosophy of writing.
Always ask the questions you want to, life is too short to know if you’ll get a second chance to ask , and afterlife is probably too long to wonder what the answer may be.
Thought’s a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?