All Quotes By Tag: Philosophy

“Imagine others complexly.”

“A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.”

“The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy’s staying alive.”

“All paths are present, always… and we can but choose among them.”

“What a waste my life would be without all the beautiful mistakes I’ve made.”

“So now you must choose… Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so? To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable – bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder…”

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”

“This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.”

“The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.”

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

“Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse”

“If only it were possible to love without injury – fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad that my wife had struck out at me again – I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower. ”

“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.”

“Always forgive, but never forget, else you will be a prisoner of your own hatred, and doomed to repeat your mistakes forever.”

“Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”