Quotes tagged ‘Philosophy’

“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perha…”

— Seneca, amazon.com

“Life is long, if you know how to use it.”

— Seneca, amazon.com

“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”

— Seneca, amazon.com

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”

— Seneca, amazon.com

“Knowledge has entertained me and it has shaped me and it has failed me. Something in me still starves.”

— Mary Oliver, amazon.com

“In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions. Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.”

— Mary Oliver, amazon.com

“Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.”

— Rumi, amazon.com

“There are nowadays so many ways of accessing information on the Internet without ever coming across the informed contribution of journalism. It is so important, then, that our children - all of our citizens - be encouraged to think critically rather than merely reproduce the information pushed towar…”

— Michael D Higgins, irishtimes.com

“A new politics of fear, resentment and prejudice against those who are not ‘like us’ requires the capacity to critique, which an early exposure to the themes and methods of philosophy can bring.”

— Michael D Higgins, irishtimes.com

“The point is best made by Aristotle, who supposedly asked, ‘Would you rather be a happy pig or an unhappy human?’ HSPs prefer the good feeling of being very conscious, very human, even if what we are conscious of is not always cause for rejoicing.”

— Elaine N. Aron, amazon.com

“We haven’t become anything — we simply are as we are.”

— Jack Thorne, Draco Malfoy, amazon.com

“We think we want peace and silence, and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us, like a dark and empty room without distractions where we would be forced to confront ourselves, the one person we fear the most.”

— Peter Kreeft, amazon.com

“Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it; in other words we would never travel by sea if it meant never talking about it, and for the sheer pleasure of seeing things we could never hope to describe to others.”

— Pascal, amazon.com

“Only a snob is funny tripping on a banana peel, not a humble saint.”

— Peter Kreeft, amazon.com

“One must have deeper motives and judge everything accordingly, but go on talking like an ordinary person.”

— Pascal, amazon.com

“The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.”

— John Green, Hazel, amazon.com

“It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.”

— Stephen Hawking, books.google.com

“All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of duty, but because d…”

— Bertrand Russell, amazon.com

“If he'd dropped his lifelong belief just because someone came up with an objection, it's not just that you'd be surprised, to a certain degree you'd think Quine was irrational. We all begin our inquiries somewhere, with a large complex of presuppositions and convictions. We should all be open to cha…”

— David Shatz, amazon.com

“If you saw somebody trying to resolve a spat with a spouse by putting pen to paper and setting up numbered premises, you'd find it a crazy way to settle things, and maybe would also brand it as a tactic for fleeing the real issues. Only in philosophy does this sort of exactitude win an imprimatur; e…”

— David Shatz, amazon.com