All Quotes By Tag: Philosophy

“If you alone found out what the lie was, then you’re probably right—it would make no great difference. But if you ALL found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed.”

“You spend your whole life looking for answers because you think the next answer will solve all your problems: make you a little less miserable, because when you run out of questions you don’t just run out of answers… you run out hope.”

“He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else’s nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.”

“Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child’s relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don’t know as much as we think we know.”

“Skepticism is thus a resting-place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make survey of the region in which it finds itself, so that for the future it may be able to choose its path with more certainty. But it is no dwelling-place for permanent settlement. Such can be obtained only through perfect certainty in our knowledge, alike of the objects themselves and of the limits within which all our knowledge of objects is enclosed.”

“I am what some would say ‘holy, and wholly other than you.’ The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn’t much, and then call that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I’m not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think.”

“In the battle that is philosophy all the techniques of war, including looting and camouflage, are permissible.”

“An attempt to achieve the good by force is like an attempt to provide a man with a picture gallery at the price of cutting out his eyes.”

“If just one of [those people] experiences life as a crazy adventure–and I mean that he, or she, experiences this every single day… Then he or she is a joker in a pack of cards.”

“No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity”

“The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.”

“We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose – even for transforming murderers into judges.”

“As soon as a religion comes to dominate it has as its opponents all those who would have been its first disciples. ”

“Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction.”

“In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty…”