philosophy Quotes

“In short, comics lacks the precision it ought to have for ordinary communication let alone serious philosophical deliberations.”

“What do we really want from philosophy and religion? Palliatives? Therapy? Comfort? Do we want reassuring fables or an understanding of our actual circumstances? Dismay that the Universe does not conform to our preferences seems childish. You might think that grown-ups would be ashamed to put such thoughts into print. The fashionable way of doing this is not to blame the Universe -- which seems truly pointless -- but rather to blame the means by which we know the Universe, namely science.”

“Philosophy, however enlightened, however profound, gives no command over the passions, no influential motives, no vivifying principles.”

“The nature of the case and the history of philosophy combine to recommend to us this division of intellectual labour between Academies and Universities.”

“The great novelists are philosophical novelists . . . They consider the work of art both as an end and a beginning. It is the outcome of an often unexpressed philosophy, its illustration and its consummation. But it is complete only through the implications of that philosophy.”

“My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (--its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement (“union”) with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on.”

“It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.”

“Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.”

“There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”

“Maybe we should always start everything from the inside and work to the outside, and not from the outside to the inside. What d’you think?”

“It is better to go with the flow or let the flow go?”

“Maybe we should always start everything from the inside and work to the outside, and not from the outside to the inside. What’d you think?”

“He thought: How difficult it is to explain yourself to yourself. Sometimes there only is, and no knowing.”

“Is it better to go with the flow or let the flow go?”

“Well, I think that’s a great philosophy Will, that way you can go through your entire life without ever having to really know anybody.”

“The world is in need of a practical, understandable philosophy of achievement, organized from the factual knowledge gained from the experience of men and women in the great university of life.”