All Quotes By Tag: Philosophy

“Formation may be the best name for what happens in a circle of trust, because the word refers, historically, to soul work done in community. But a quick disclaimer is in order, since formation sometimes means a process quite contrary to the one described in this book—-a process in which the pressure of orthodox doctrine, sacred text, and institutional authority is applied to the misshapen soul in order to conform it to the shape dictated by some theology. This approach is rooted in the idea that we are born with souls deformed by sin, and our situation is hopeless until the authorities “form” us properly. But all of that is turned upside down by the principles of a circle of trust: I applaud the theologian who said that “the idea of humans being born alienated from the Creator would seem an abominable concept.” Here formation flows from the belief that we are born with souls in perfect form. As time goes on, we subject to powers of deformation, from within as well as without, that twist us into shapes alien to the shape of the soul. But the soul never loses its original form and never stops calling us back to our birhtright integrity.”

“If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones.”

“Hence the great irony: Hayek, one of the greatest champions of individual liberty and economic freedom the world has ever known, believed that knowledge was communal. Dewey, the champion of socialism and collectivism, believed that knowledge was individual. Hayek’s is a philosophy that treats individuals as the best judges of their own self-interests, which in turn yield staggering communal cooperation. Dewey’s was the philosophy of a giant, Monty Pythonesque crowd shouting on cue: “We’re All Individuals!”

“[O]ther thinkers have philosophised since the time of Plato, but that does not destroy the interest and beauty of his philosophy”

“When they have discovered truth in nature they fling it into a book, where it is even worse hands.”

“Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocfence leads her to make a poor choice – the very worst – but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck – all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong.”

“Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how thespirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.”

“I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind.”

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which a man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of human is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for the brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way-an honorable way-in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words,”The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”

“Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.”

“I only seem negative to the fortunate. That’s because I show the less fortunate that they aren’t less fortunate after all.”

“It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death– ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.”

“I have a sickness doctors can’t cure,Inexorably pulling me to the well of my destruction,Consented to be a sacrifice, killed for her love,Eager, like the drunk gulping wine mixed with poison,Shameless were those my nights,Yet my soul loved them beyond all passion.”

“To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one’s own nature, to weaken oneself; we conceive freedom only for ourselves – we extend it to our neighbours only at the cost of exhausting efforts; whence the precariousness of liberalism, a defiance of our instincts, a brief and miraculous success, a state of exception, at the antipodes of our deepest imperatives.”

“Плътта, ако крепне, крепне за сметка на духа; и духът, ако съзрява, то ене по друг начин, а за сметка на упокояването на плътта.”