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Philosophy Quotes

Elfboy

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"Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of passions" David Hume

"The mind is everything. What you think you become." - Buddha
Picked that one out a hat. I like the economical ones.
A reminder that you can think your way to fulfillment.

that's ridiculous
 
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ndovjtjcaqidthi

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If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
-Wittgenstein
 

Ene

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"Show respect to all men (people), but grovel to none." Tecumseh (Shawnee poet, philosopher and warrior/military leader)
 

Mole

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The 'philosophy quotes' here are not Western Philosophy.

Western Philosophy started with the Ancient Greek, Socrates. And the Socratic method questions the taken for granted.

The 'philosophy quotes' here are merely sayings - just the kind of things Socrates would question.

But the reality is, sayings are boring, while the Socratic method is exciting.

Really, sayings are for those feeling a bit down and want a lift - and they are called 'philosophy' to give them a higher status.
 

Hypatia

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The 'philosophy quotes' here are not Western Philosophy.

Western Philosophy started with the Ancient Greek, Socrates. And the Socratic method questions the taken for granted.

The 'philosophy quotes' here are merely sayings - just the kind of things Socrates would question.

But the reality is, sayings are boring, while the Socratic method is exciting.

Really, sayings are for those feeling a bit down and want a lift - and they are called 'philosophy' to give them a higher status.

Thank you for your self-quotes, Mole. ;)
 
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ndovjtjcaqidthi

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"Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?" Emil Cioran
 

Hawbawbowba

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"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and it's speaker a raving lunatic." -Dresden James
 
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ndovjtjcaqidthi

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“We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer… The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the meaning of life became clear to them have been unable to say what constituted that meaning?)”

Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus




The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other—he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—but it would be the only strictly correct method.

6.54
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands
me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out
through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw
away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)
He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world
rightly.
7
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
 

Eruca

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"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and it's speaker a raving lunatic." -Dresden James

And thus a whole lot of arrogant and delusional people gain credence for their whack job beliefs. The revolutionary, truth-telling, man or woman before their time is very likely to be seen as a "raving lunatic". But those we see as "raving lunactics" are much, much more likely to be very simply that.
 

Eruca

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"Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign."

"In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time"

"It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak."

- Many quotes from the fantastic On Liberty from John Stuart Mill

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." - Personal favourite Einstein quote

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Einstein again

"A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest." - Foucault

"The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them." - Foucault
 
S

Society

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“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”
― Neil Gaiman

"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of military life—they are soldiers from that moment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves or not at all."
- Gene wolfe

"One thing, however, did become clear to him [Goldmund] – why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable beauty. Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing – mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery."
- Hermann Hesse

“Let me give you some advice, bastard: Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.”
- George R.R. Martin

"Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of mind is surprise."
- Terry Pratchett
 
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WALMART

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Not seeing the pleasant as to see the unpleasant - both are painful.

Buddhism - greatest reason given to play the field of existence?
 
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ndovjtjcaqidthi

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"The present age is one of understanding, of reflection, devoid of passion, an age which flies into enthusiasm for a moment only to decline back into indolence. ... Action and passion is as absent in the present age as peril is absent from swimming in shallow waters."

"Not even a suicide does away with himself out of desperation, he considers the act so long and so deliberately, that he kills himself with thinking -- one could barely call it suicide since it is thinking which takes his life. He does not kill himself with deliberation but rather kills himself because of deliberation. Therefore, one can not really prosecute this generation, for its art, its understanding, its virtuosity and good sense lies in reaching a judgment or a decision, not in taking action."

—Kierkegaard, The Present Age (1846)
 

zago

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All of the following are attributed to or about Diogenes:

"I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be."

When Alexander the Great addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, Diogenes replied "Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine." Alexander replied, "If I were not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes."

"I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly." (think about that one for a sec)

Diogenes received an invitation to dine with one whose house was splendidly furnished, in the highest order and taste, and nothing therein wanting. Diogenes, hawking, and as if about to spit, looked in all directions, and finding nothing adapted thereto, spat right in the face of the master. He, indignant, asked why he did so? "Because," Diogenes, "I saw nothing so dirty and filthy in all your house. For the walls were covered with pictures, the floors of the most precious tessellated character — and ranged with the various images of gods, and other ornamental figures."

Diogenes the Cynic, it is related, was mighty of all people in regard to everything from self-control to endurance. He indulged in sexual lusts, not associating it with pleasure, an attractive good thing to some, but because of the harm that the retention of semen would cause if he avoided the habit of releasing it. When a prostitute who promised to visit him was delayed for some time, he rubbed his genitals with his hand, ejecting semen. After the whore arrived, he sent her away, saying: "my hand celebrated the wedding-hymn first." But it is clearly correct that, likewise, the disciplined man does not on account of pleasure indulge in lusts, but in order to relieve the hindrance acting as if this was not associated with pleasure.

"A Socrates gone mad." - Plato
 
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ndovjtjcaqidthi

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“The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest: asceticism becomes in them nature, need, and instinct. Difficult tasks are a privilege to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. Knowledge-a form of asceticism. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest. ”

—Nietzsche, Der Antichrist, 1888
 

RaptorWizard

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The integral approach is committed to the full spectrum of consciousness as it manifests in all its extraordinary diversity. This allows the integral approach to recognize and honor the Great Holarchy of Being first elucidated by the perennial philosophy and the great wisdom traditions in general. The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well. ~ Ken Wilber
 
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