Philosophical Quotations | Page 2

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.

There are philosophical issues involved in that about choosing the right discount rate, the value, the future, and things like that which drive it. But its start with the premise that global warming is real and if you're a denier of that fact, then you're not going to find climate change mitigation policies to have particular appeal.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.

The argument about zoning and the presidency of Nigeria is like the philosophical argument of the egg or the hen. Who is older through the evolutionary process, who came first?

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?

You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise they're simply unbearable.

Evolutionary naturalism takes the inherent limitations of science and turns them into a devastating philosophical weapon: because science is our only real way of knowing anything, what science cannot know cannot be real.

Surrogate motherhood has been the subject of much philosophical and political dispute over the years.

It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.

There are many of these apparent philosophical paradoxes or contradictions which don't concern me anymore.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

In writing the history of a disease, every philosophical hypothesis whatsoever, that has previously occupied the mind of the author, should lie in abeyance.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.

A purpose, an intention, a design, strikes everywhere even the careless, the most stupid thinker.

The highest Hindu intellectual training was based on the practice of yoga, and produced, as its fruit, those marvellous philosophical systems, the six Darshanas and the Brahma Sutras, which are still the delight of scholars and the inspiration of occultists and mystics.

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

The human body is essentially something other than an animal organism.

I feel like the Internet needs to be disarmed in some way. There needs to be a philosophical undermining of the Internet. We take it too seriously and too literally. For a reference we go to Wikipedia, which is full of inaccuracies and misinformation. It's kind of beautiful - it's all the product of imagination; it's not reality at all.

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.

Practice yourself, for heaven's sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.

Swing voters are more appropriately known as the 'idiot voters' because they have no set of philosophical principles. By the age of fourteen, you're either a Conservative or a Liberal if you have an IQ above a toaster.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

I can't pretend that I'm a great student of the art of comedy because anybody that becomes philosophical about humour doesn't know what he's talking about.

Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

Philosophical reflection could not leave the relation of mind and spirit in the obscurity which had satisfied the needs of the naive consciousness.

Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unregarded by us.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.

I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.

Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.

Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.

I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.

Love begets love, love knows no rules, this is same for all.

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

The philosophical spirit is not satisfied to simply accept what it is told, no matter how much prestige the teller seems to have. This is true even if the teller is a god.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

What I think I have in common with the school of deconstruction is the mode of negative thinking or negative awareness, in the technical, philosophical sense of the negative, but which comes to me through negative theology.

The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.

The Web is now philosophical engineering. Physics and the Web are both about the relationship between the small and the large.

Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.

Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

We cannot pass our guardian angel's bounds, resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.

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

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.

I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment

The first of these phases is that of grammar, invented by the Greeks and carried on unchanged by the French. It never had any philosophical view of a language as such.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.

I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.

Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance.

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

My philosophy is: If you can't have fun, there's no sense in doing it.

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

Hug the shore; let others try the deep.

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.

I've taken a philosophical position on e-mail. Although I think it's a wonderful communication technology, and it has a lot of good uses, it is abused quite a lot.

But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

To live happily is an inward power of the soul.

Intelligence is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.

Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help.

The work with which we embark on this first volume of a series of theological studies is a work with which the philosophical person does not begin, but rather concludes.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.