Quotes About Philosophy

In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man.

We may say, in a broad way, that Greek philosophy down to Aristotle expresses the mentality appropriate to the City State; that Stoicism is appropriate to a cosmopolitan despotism; that stochastic philosophy is an intellectual expression of the Church as an organization; that philosophy since Descartes, or at any rate since Locke, tends to embody the prejudices of the commercial middle class; and that Marxism and Fascism are the philosophies appropriate to the modern industrial state.

In my view, we ought to replace the notion of analytic philosophy by that of synthetic philosophy.

I am opposing it with an idea of the history of philosophy as a history of philosophers, that is, a history of mortal, fragile and limited creatures like you and I. I am against the idea of clean, clearly distinct epochs in the history of philosophy or indeed in anything else. I think that history is always messy, contingent, plural and material. I am against the constant revenge of idealism in how we think about history.

Certain issues in philosophy of science (having to do with observation and the definition of a theory's empirical import) had beenmisconstrued as issues in philosophy of logic and of language. With respect to modality, I hold the exact opposite: important philosophical problems concerning language have been misconstrued as relating to the content of science and the nature of the world. This is not at all new, but is the traditional nominalist line.

Philosophy is a purely personal matter. A genuine philosopher's credo is the outcome of a single complex personality; it cannot be transferred. No two persons, if sincere, can have the same philosophy.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

A Christian philosophy of literature begins with the same agenda of issues that any philosophy of literature addresses. Its distinctive feature is that it relates these issues to the Christian faith.

I never really wanted to have a Guru, I was more interested in Buddhist philosophy and meditation, and had a psychological background in college, but he had so much love. To be with him, there was nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. Nothing he taught, philosophy or meditation, are the things I went to India to look for, or was interested in, but he sort of jumped into my heart and then pulled, he pried it open.

You need philosophy. It sounds a little pompous but I think when you direct a film, the only way to find a response to the questions you keep asking yourself is to have a philosophy.

In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.

We must strive to encourage East and West not only to move towards each other but also to encourage them to find a new philosophy, a philosophy which will serve as a tool determining the future of Planet Earth - our common and only shelter.

All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.

If I had a religious experience, what I know for sure is that I would stop doing philosophy and would start doing religion, teaching classes in religion, preaching in a local church. That is fine and noble activity. But I do not feel entitled to engage in it. So for me philosophy is my fate.

Everybody have equal rights to a life of full flourishing. Philosophy slowly, slowly has given us arguments saying, look, you already committed to your own life flourishing, and you're being inconsistent if you don't expand it. So philosophy often works in trying to show us that there's an inner incoherence in our points of view. We're all committed to one thing when it comes to us and our own kind, but we're not willing to expand it and we're guilty of inconsistency.

I don't know whether I can say that having a career in philosophy has turned out as I imagined, since in many ways I had little idea of what such a life would be like. But philosophy is still tremendously exciting to me, and the opportunity to think, and talk, and write about these issues has been wonderful.

The moment when someone attaches you to a philosophy or a movement, then they assign all the baggage and all the rest of the philosophy that goes with it to you. And when you want to have a conversation, they will assert that they already know everything important there is to know about you because of that association. And that's not the way to have a conversation.

Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth'...Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory - it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe. I think that most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been a result of just such a moment.

In my view, there was a long period in which analytical philosophy had little to say about ethics. I think their intellectual tools did not do well with it, and analytical philosophy was above all about revolutionizing the philosophical tool box. It was more or less assumed that the Truth about ethics was some form of utilitarianism (perhaps because some consequentialist calculus looked to them like a respectable tool). Kantian ethics was then interpreted as a particularly odious version of the False - "deontology" - and treated with contempt.

Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato,--at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither Saxon nor Roman have availed to add any idea to his categories.

The aim of human life is to know thyself. Think for yourself. Question authority. Think with your friends. Create, create new realities. Philosophy is a team sport. Philosophy is the ultimate, the ultimate aphrodisiac pleasure. Learning how to operate your brain, learning how to operate your mind, learning how to redesign chaos

Science...has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must have included any role for God.

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.

The Bible, of course, is not a theology book. It is certainly not a philosophy book. So we have to derive the meaning of terms from the context in use.

God wants you to understand the Word of God. The Bible is not a mystery book. It's not a book of philosophy. It's a book of truth that explains the attitude and heart of almighty God.

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.

At the very moment when someone is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world believes the opposite.

...60 advocates of unorthodox therapies whose credentials are given in the ACS book (above).(:) Of these 60, thirty-nine or almost two-thirds, hold...medical degrees from such universities as Harvard, Illinois, Northwestern, Yale, Dublin, Oxford, or Toronto. Two are osteopaths. 3...also hold...(PhD's)....scientific....reputable....8 others received PhD's in such fields as chemistry, physiology, bacteriology, parasitology, or medical physics, from...Yale, Johns Hopkins, UC Berkeley, Columbia, and NYU. Thus over 75%...are medical doctors or doctors of philosophy in scientific areas.

The few existing writings against Kantian philosophy are the most important documents in the case history of sound common sense.

The decisions of the courts on economic and social questions depend on their economic and social philosophy.

I need not instruct you of my belief: Time gives all and takes all away ; everything changes but nothing perishes ; One only is immutable, eternal and ever endures, one and the same with itself. With this philosophy my spirit grows, my mind expands. Whereof, how r ever obscure the night may be, I await daybreak, and they who dwell in day look for night Rejoice therefore, and keep whole, if you can, and return love for love.

Before the scientific rationalism took hold of our minds and before we became succumbed to a materialistic worldview, the Western philosophy was holistic and relational, and even now there are many scientists in the West seeing things totally interconnected.

In fact - statistically, as you know - people have done polls, research, and at least 80 percent or more or working media are liberal Democrats if they are involved with any party and certainly liberal in their philosophy.

Chairman Mao creatively applied Marxism-Leninism to every aspect of the Chinese revolution, and he had creative views on philosophy, political science, military science, literature and art, and so on. Unfortunately, in the evening of his life, particularly during the "Cultural Revolution", he made mistakes - and they were not minor ones - which brought many misfortunes upon our Party, our state and our people.

Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.

That Britain today is a liberal society is largely because of the philosophy and outlook of the Anglican Church, which did so much to shape our core values in the past few centuries.

Poetry and philosophy are, according to how you take them, different spheres, different forms, or factors of religion. Try to really combine both, and you will have nothing but religion.

Nature, philosophy and social issues are the three things that always occupy my mind. You do not have any power over others but can only change yourself.

Plato worried that philosophical writing would take the place of living conversations for which, in philosophy, there is no substitute.

There is also a philosophy of less-is-more, and a little dignity that never hurt anybody. There are many qualities to admire about our father's generation.

True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

The philosophy of praxis does not aim at the peaceful resolution of existing contradictions in history and society, but is the very theory of these contradictions. It is not the instrument of government of the dominant groups in order to gain the consent and exercise hegemony over the subaltern classes. It is the expression of subaltern classes who want to educate themselves in the art of government and who have an interest in knowing all truths, even the unpleasant ones, and in avoiding the impossible deceptions of the upper class, and even more their own.

One of the more pretentious political self-descriptions is 'Libertarian.' People think it puts them above the fray. It sounds fashionable, and to the uninitiated, faintly dangerous. Actually, it's just one more bullshit political philosophy.

As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldnt necessarily be good.

About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.

Bryan [Iguchi] had this beautiful philosophy about our connection with these incredible cycles. There's a line from one of his poems that always stays with me about 'This process we follow; this cycle we ride' and it's almost become a strap line for the film.