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7230b8d By calling into question the very ideal of a universal, autonomous reason (which was, in the Enlightenment, the basis for rejecting religious thought) and further demonstrating that all knowledge is grounded in narrative or myth, Lyotard relativizes (secular) philosophy's claim to autonomy and so grants the legitimacy of a philosophy that grounds itself in Christian faith. Previously such a distinctly Christian philosophy would have been exiled from the 'pure' arena of philosophy because of its 'infection' with bias and prejudice. Lyotard's critique, however, demonstrates that no philosophy - indeed, no knowledge - is untainted by prejudice or faith commitments. In this way the playing field is leveled, and new opportunities to voice a Christian philosophy are created. Thus Lyotard's postmodern critique of metanarratives, rather than being a formidable foe of Christian faith and thought, can in fact be enlisted as an ally in the construction of a Christian philosophy. christianity knowledge lyotard metanarrative narrative objectivity philosophy prejudice the-enlightenment James K.A. Smith
cf57761 ...moral relativism, a position many find attractive only until they are faced with someone who is doing something really, really wrong. moral-philosophy philosophy Peter Singer
8e42c72 Empirical science, empiricism, takes no account of the soul, no account of what constitutes and determines personal being. philosophy science Oliver Sacks
7d671fe "[E]very man ought to say to himself, "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?" philosophy sartre Jean-Paul Sartre
67c56e3 It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting. The woods are acres of sticks: I could walk to the Gulf of Mexico in a straight line. When the leaves fall, the striptease is over; things stand mute and revealed. Everywhere skies extend, vistas deepen, walls become windows, doors open. philosopher-s-stone philosophy reading soul spirit walking winter wonder writing Annie Dillard
3347acf Das Negative zu tun, ist uns noch auferlegt, das Positive ist uns schon gegeben. good-and-evil philosophy philosophy-of-life Franz Kafka
e21b883 Morality means choice. Choice means priorities. Priorities mean a hierarchy. A hierarchy means something at the top, a standard. That is the greatest good. If you have no greatest good, you have no hierarchy, you have no priorities. If you have no priorities, you cannot make intelligent choices. If you cannot make intelligent moral choices, you have no morality. You can still guide your life by your feelings or by social fashions, but that is not choice - not free, responsible, moral choice. Both feelings and fashions push you; you are passive. But moral choice is your own doing; you are active. You are responsible for your choices but not for your feelings or for your environment's fashions. decision-making freedom morality philosophy Peter Kreeft
f58c00e The Greeks who rhapsodized about democracy in their rhetoric rarely created democratic institutions. A few cities such as Athens occasionally attempted a system vaguely akin to democracy for a few years. These cities functioned as slave societies and were certainly not egalitarian or democratic in the Indian sense. democracy philosophy political-theory Jack Weatherford
fdbe635 Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him. philosophy sartre Jean-Paul Sartre
91b81be In truth, philosophy is the mode of thought shaped by the most radical form of prejudice: the passion of being-in-the-world. With the sole exception of specialists in the field, virtually everyone senses that anything which offers less than this passion play remains philosophically trivial. Cultural anthropologists suggest the appealing term 'deep play' for the comprehensively absorbing preoccupations of human beings. From the perspective of a theory of the practising life we would add: the deep plays are those which are moved by the heights. deep-play passion philosophy Peter Sloterdijk
fd4adb7 Coastal people never really know what the ocean symbolizes to landlocked inland people--what a great distant dream it is, present but unseen in the deepest levels of subconsciousness, and when they arrive at the ocean and the conscious images are compared with the subconscious dream there is a sense of defeat at having come so far to be so stopped by the mystery that can never be fathomed. The source of it all. philosophy Robert M. Pirsig
7d8cbf6 Wenn man einmal das Bose bei sich aufgenommen hat, verlangt es nicht mehr, dass man ihm glaube. good-and-evil philosophy philosophy-of-life Franz Kafka
0ad17b4 ... primitive times had required primitive obedience, that later generations evolved to the point where parents offered themselves as sacrifice - as in the dark knights of the ovens which pocked old earth history - and that current generations had to deny any command for sacrifice. Sol had written that whatever God now took in human consciousness - whether as a mere manifestation of the subconscious in all its revanchist needs or as a more conscious attempt at philosophical and ethical evolution - humankind could no longer agree to offer up sacrifice in God's name. Sacrifice and the agreement to sacrifice had written human history in blood. god obedience philosophy Dan Simmons
54d729a Intellectual activity in a culture is not a one-way flow between the great minds and passive recipients; it is a discourse, a complex marketplace-like conglomeration of intellectual exchanges involving many participants all trying to manipulate the ideas available to them in order to explain, justify, lay blame for, or otherwise make sense of what is happening around them. Everyone, not just the great minds, participates in this complicated process. history-of-thought philosophy Gordon S. Wood
8b6996b Terrorism has made our world an integrated community in a new and frightening way. Not merely the activities of our neighbors, but those of the inhabitants of the most remote mountain valleys of the farthest-flung countries of our planet, have become our business. We need to extend the reach of the criminal law there and to have the means to bring terrorists to justice without declaring war on an entire country in order to do it. For this we need a sound global system of criminal justice, so justice does not become the victim of national differences of opinion. We also need, though it will be far more difficult to achieve, a sense that we really are one community, that we are people who recognize not only the force of prohibitions against killing each other but also the pull of obligations to assist one another. This may not stop religious fanatics from carrying out suicide missions, but it will help to isolate them and reduce their support. philosophy political-philosophy politics Peter Singer
da9bfc8 L'amore e una faccenda intima strana e piena di contraddizioni, visto che non di rado amiamo qualcuno solo perche amiamo noi stessi, per egoismo, avidita, desiderio fisico, brama di dominare l'oggetto d'amore e asservirlo; o al contrario, per desiderio di asservirci e essere dominati dal nostro amante, e in fondo l'amore assomiglia all'odio e gli e piu prossimo di quanto non si pensi normalmente. jewish love love-and-hate love-hurts love-quotes philosophical philosophy philosophy-of-life religion Amos Oz
c0f7a98 Ansar is an Arabic term that means helpers or supporters. They were the citizens of Medina who helped Prophet Mohammed upon His arrival to the Holy city. While 'Hussain' is a derivation of 'Hassan' that means 'GOOD' (I also owe this one to Khaled Hosseini). That's how my favorite character in my debut novel 'When Strangers meet..' gets his name... HUSSAIN ANSARI, because he is the one who helps Jai realize the truth in the story and inspires his son, Arshad, to have FAITH in Allah. anecdotes hassan hussain india inspirational islam iyer jai khaled-hosseini mecca medina mohammad mohammed mohmet muslim pakistan pathan pathanvali peace philosophy prophet trivia when-strangers-meet K. Hari Kumar
4acfd87 An area of land used for crops will feed about ten times as many people as the same area of land used for grass-fed beef. ethics morality philosophy veganism Peter Singer
bb6b593 "Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard. fate homer iliad life philosophy Richmond Lattimore
d576214 Let us see what words can do. Will you understand me, for a start, if I tell you that I have never known what I am? My vices, my virtues, are under my nose, but I can't see them, nor stand far enough back to view myself as a whole. I seem to be a sort of flabby mass in which words are engulfed; no sooner do I name myself than what is named is merged in him who names, and one gets no farther. I have often wanted to hate myself and, as you know, had good reasons for so doing. But my attempted hatred of myself was absorbed into my insubstantiality and was nothing but a recollection. I could not love myself either, I am sure, though I have never tried to. But I was eternally compelled to be myself; I was my own burden, but never burdensome enough, Mathieu. For one instant, on that June evening when I elected to confess to you, I thought I had encountered myself in your bewildered eyes. You saw me, in your eyes I was solid and predictable; my acts and moods were the actual consequences of a definite entity. And through me you knew that entity. I described it to you in my words, I revealed to you facts unknown to you, which had helped you to visualize it. And yet you saw it, I merely saw you seeing it. For one instant you were the heaven-sent mediator between me and myself, you perceived that compact and solid entity which I was and wanted to be in just as simple and ordinary a way as I perceived you. For, after all, I exist, I am, though I have no sense of being; and it is an exquisite torment to discover in oneself such utterly unfounded certainty, such unsubstantiated pride. I then understood that one could not reach oneself except through another's judgment, another's hatred. And also through another's love perhaps; but there is here no question of that. For this revelation I am not ungrateful to you. I do not know how you would describe our present relations. Not goodwill, nor wholly hatred. Put it that there is a corpse between us. My corpse. existentialism philosophy Jean-Paul Sartre
fc3f023 I've said you can actually this fusion in skilled mechanics and machinists of a certain sort, and you can see it in the work they do. To say that they are not artists is to misunderstand the nature of art. They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they're doing, but more than this--there's a kind of inner peace of mind that isn't contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there's no leader and no follower. The material and the craftsman's thoughts change together in a progression of smooth, even changes until his mind is at rest at the exact instant the material is right. craftsmanship creating manufacturing philosophy Robert M. Pirsig
344581c "Now anybody can be "kind." And everybody's supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn't help. Now it's just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class." kindness philosophy Robert M. Pirsig
900bb3a And under the cicadas, deeper down that the longest taproot, between and beneath the rounded black rocks and slanting slabs of sandstone in the earth, ground water is creeping. Ground water seeps and slides, across and down, across and down, leaking from here to there, minutely at a rate of a mile a year. What a tug of waters goes on! There are flings and pulls in every direction at every moment. The world is a wild wrestle under the grass; earth shall be moved. What else is going on right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet? The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening. If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow. The sun's surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight. Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long. On the planet, the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades. Somewhere, someone under full sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums; in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the eerie scent of the chinook, the sweater, a wind that can melt two feet of snow in a day. The pampero blows, and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral. Lick a finger; feel the now. Spring is seeping north, towards me and away from me, at sixteen miles a day. Along estuary banks of tidal rivers all over the world, snails in black clusters like currants are gliding up and down the stems of reed and sedge, migrating every moment with the dip and swing of tides. Behind me, Tinker Mountain is eroding one thousandth of an inch a year. The sharks I saw are roving up and down the coast. If the sharks cease roving, if they still their twist and rest for a moment, they die. They need new water pushed into their gills; they need dance. Somewhere east of me, on another continent, it is sunset, and starlings in breathtaking bands are winding high in the sky to their evening roost. The mantis egg cases are tied to the mock-orange hedge; within each case, within each egg, cells elongate, narrow, and split; cells bubble and curve inward, align, harden or hollow or stretch. And where are you now? beauty belief consciousness creation curiosity disbelief energy enoughness epiphany exploration exultant faith fate fearless fire free freedom gaps god grace growth hallelujah humility illumination intricacy joy joyful joyfulness life-force light living-in-the-present-moment mindfulness multiplicity mystery nature philosopher-s-stone philosophy poem poet poetry power praise prayer prayers praying religion religious-diversity science seeing seeking soul spirit stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it tolerance walking watching wonder Annie Dillard
d04282e They lived like monkeys still, while their new god powers lay around them in the weeds. philosophy science Kim Stanley Robinson
ee83e05 "The remarkable thing about the world of insects, however, is precisely that there is no veil cast over these horrors. These are mysteries performed in broad daylight before our very eyes; we can see every detail, and yet they are still mysteries. If, as Heraclitus suggests, god, like an oracle, neither "declares nor hides, but sets forth by signs," then clearly I had better be scrying the signs. The earth devotes an overwhelming proportion of its energy to these buzzings and leaps in the grass. Theirs is the biggest wedge of the pie: Why? I ought to keep a giant water bug in an aquarium on my dresser, so I can think about it." consciousness energy insects mindfulness mystery nature philosophy signs spirit wonder Annie Dillard
617ede5 Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world. They are taking it further and further from that better world. Since the Renaissance these modes have worked. As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that for huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really is...emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty. That, today, is where it is at, and will continue to be at for a long time to come. american-culture american-society food-for-thought modern-problems philosophy Robert M. Pirsig
c64c71a Yes, I felt guilt. Somehow I had pushed Fand to the precipice without realizing it, and had I not been so blind, perhaps she wouldn't be trying to pull us all over the edge with her now. I was sure Manannan felt it too-the crushing questions of how we got to this place and whether we could have avoided it, where we went wrong, and whether we would ever learn how not to cock up other people's lives in the course of living our own. philosophy Kevin Hearne
b488979 "All at once, something wonderful happened, although at first, it seemed perfectly ordinary. A female goldfinch suddenly hove into view. She lighted weightlessly on the head of a bankside purple thistle and began emptying the seedcase, sowing the air with down. The lighted frame of my window filled. The down rose and spread in all directions, wafting over the dam's waterfall and wavering between the tulip trunks and into the meadow. It vaulted towards the orchard in a puff; it hovered over the ripening pawpaw fruit and staggered up the steep faced terrace. It jerked, floated, rolled, veered, swayed. The thistle down faltered down toward the cottage and gusted clear to the woods; it rose and entered the shaggy arms of pecans. At last it strayed like snow, blind and sweet, into the pool of the creek upstream, and into the race of the creek over rocks down. It shuddered onto the tips of growing grasses, where it poised, light, still wracked by errant quivers. I was holding my breath. Is this where we live, I thought, in this place in this moment, with the air so light and wild? The same fixity that collapses stars and drives the mantis to devour her mate eased these creatures together before my eyes: the thick adept bill of the goldfinch, and the feathery coded down. How could anything be amiss? If I myself were lighter and frayed, I could ride these small winds, too, taking my chances, for the pleasure of being so purely played. The thistle is part of Adam's curse. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." A terrible curse: But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle or do I? If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed. If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom. I was weightless; my bones were taut skins blown with buoyant gas; it seemed that if I inhaled too deeply, my shoulders and head would waft off. Alleluia." beauty belief consciousness creation curiosity disbelief energy enoughness epiphany exploration exultant faith fate fearless fire free freedom gaps god grace growth hallelujah humility illumination intricacy joy joyful joyfulness life-force light living-in-the-present-moment mindfulness multiplicity mystery nature philosopher-s-stone philosophy poem poet poetry power praise prayer prayers praying religion religious-diversity ring-the-bells science seeing seeking soul spirit stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it tolerance walking watching wonder Annie Dillard
abee3b8 Every fall into love is the triumph of hope over self-knowledge essays idealization love on-love philosophy Alain de Botton
053d7df "What about you, Snipes?" Dunbar asked. "You think there to be mountain lions up here or is it just folks' imaginings?" Snipes pondered the question a few moments before speaking. They's many a man of science would claim there aint because you got no irredeemable evidence like panther scat or fur or tooth or tail. In other words, some part of the animal in questions. Or better yet having the actual critter itself, the whole think kit and caboodle head to tail, which all your men of science argue is the best proof of all a thing exists, whether it be a panther, or a bird, or even a dinosaur." To put it another way, if you was to stub your toe and tell the man of science what happened he'd not believe a word of it less he could see how it'd stoved up or was bleeding. But your philosophers and theologians and such say there's things in the world that's every bit as real even though you can't see them." Like what?" Dunbar asked. Well," Snipes said. "They's love, that's one. And courage. You can't see neither of them, but they're real. And air, of course. That's one of your most important examples. You wouldn't be alive a minute if there wasn't air, but nobody's ever seen a single speck of it." courage darkness faith love philosophy science Ron Rash
55adefa we would not reliably assent to reproduce unless we first had lost our minds. philosophy relationships schopenhauer Alain de Botton
5088d36 "If, as Heraclitus suggests, god, like an oracle, neither "declares nor hides, but sets forth by signs," then clearly I had better be scrying the signs." -- philosophy religion universe world Annie Dillard
9ef93ca Everything was dragging me toward the arts; even the study of modern philosophy suggested that philosophy was nonsense. philosophy Steve Martin
141528a Pro Life' or 'Right to Life' movement is misnamed. Those who protest against abortion but dine regularly on the bodies of chickens, pigs and calves can hardly claim to have concern for 'life' as such. Their concern about embryos and fetuses suggests only a biased concern for the lives of members of our own species. ethics morality philosophy Peter Singer
a3798c0 Well, where is God,' said Mrs. Coulter, 'if he's alive? And why doesn't he speak anymore? At the beginning of the world, God walked in the Garden and spoke with Adam and Eve. Then he began to withdraw, and he forbade Moses to look at his face. Later, in the time of Daniel, he was aged--he was the Ancient of Days. Where is he now? Is he still alive, at some inconceivable age, decrepit and demented, unable to think or act or speak and unable to die, a rotten hulk? And if that is his condition, wouldn't it be the most merciful thing, the truest proof of our love for God, to seek him out and give him the gift of death? philosophy religion Philip Pullman
f7429a4 As long as God is a man, not a couple, the life of a woman, according to Hanna,is bound to remain as it is now, namely wretched, with woman as the proletarian of Creation, however smartly dressed. god philosophy women Max Frisch
c1fc6f5 Mma Ramotswe tucked the cheque safely away in her bodice. Modern business methods were all very well, she thought, but when it came to the safeguarding of money there were some places which had yet to be bettered. humour life-lessons philosophy Alexander McCall Smith
e8657a9 "Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman's tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn't find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn't make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, "that was a good time then, a good time to be living." And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean's shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, "yes, that's how it was then, that part there was called France." I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. beauty belief consciousness creation curiosity disbelief energy enoughness epiphany exploration exultant faith fate fearless fire free freedom gaps god grace growth hallelujah humility illumination intricacy joy joyful joyfulness life-force light living-in-the-present-moment mindfulness multiplicity mystery nature philosopher-s-stone philosophy poem poet poetry power praise prayer prayers praying religion religious-diversity ring-the-bells science seeing seeking soul spirit stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it tolerance walking watching wonder Annie Dillard
6744dc1 Those people who shoot endless time-lapse films of unfurling roses and tulips have the wrong idea. They should train their cameras instead on the melting of pack ice, the green filling of ponds, the tidal swings...They should film the glaciers of Greenland, some of which creak along at such a fast clip that even the dogs bark at them. They should film the invasion of the southernmost Canadian tundra by the northernmost spruce-fir forest, which is happening right now at the rate of a mile every 10 years. When the last ice sheet receded from the North American continent, the earth rebounded 10 feet. Wouldn't that have been a sight to see? beauty belief consciousness creation curiosity disbelief energy enoughness epiphany exploration exultant faith fate fearless fire free freedom gaps god grace growth hallelujah humility illumination intricacy joy joyful joyfulness life-force light living-in-the-present-moment mindfulness multiplicity mystery nature philosopher-s-stone philosophy poem poet poetry power praise prayer prayers praying religion religious-diversity ring-the-bells science seeing seeking soul spirit stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it tolerance walking watching wonder Annie Dillard
f89ddc9 "I care not whether a man is Good or Evil; all that I care Is whether he is a Wise man or a Fool. Go! put off Holiness, fool good holiness intelligence philosophy religion stupidity wisdom William Blake
3b41102 "Say you could view a time-lapse film of our planet: what would you see? Transparent images moving through light, "an infinite storm of beauty." The beginning is swaddled in mists, blasted by random blinding flashes. Lava pours and cools; seas boil and flood. Clouds materialize and shift; now you can see the earth's face through only random patches of clarity. The land shudders and splits, like pack ice rent by a widening lead. Mountains burst up, jutting and dull and soften before your eyes, clothed in forests like felt. The ice rolls up, grinding green land under water forever; the ice rolls back. Forests erupt and disappear like fairy rings. The ice rolls up-mountains are mowed into lakes, land rises wet from the sea like a surfacing whale- the ice rolls back. A blue-green streaks the highest ridges, a yellow-green spreads from the south like a wave up a strand. A red dye seems to leak from the north down the ridges and into the valleys, seeping south; a white follows the red, then yellow-green washes north, then red spreads again, then white, over and over, making patterns of color too swift and intricate to follow. Slow the film. You see dust storms, locusts, floods, in dizzying flash frames. Zero in on a well-watered shore and see smoke from fires drifting. Stone cities rise, spread, and then crumble, like patches of alpine blossoms that flourish for a day an inch above the permafrost, that iced earth no root can suck, and wither in a hour. New cities appear, and rivers sift silt onto their rooftops; more cities emerge and spread in lobes like lichen on rock. The great human figures of history, those intricate, spirited tissues that roamed the earth's surface, are a wavering blur whose split second in the light was too brief an exposure to yield any images. The great herds of caribou pour into the valleys and trickle back, and pour, a brown fluid. Slow it down more, come closer still. A dot appears, like a flesh-flake. It swells like a balloon; it moves, circles, slows, and vanishes. This is your life." beauty belief consciousness creation curiosity disbelief energy enoughness epiphany exploration exultant faith fate fearless fire free freedom gaps god grace growth hallelujah humility illumination intricacy joy joyful joyfulness life-force light living-in-the-present-moment mindfulness multiplicity mystery nature philosopher-s-stone philosophy poem poet poetry power praise prayer prayers praying religion religious-diversity ring-the-bells science seeing seeking soul spirit stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it tolerance walking watching wonder Annie Dillard
fc5f3b3 The continuing belief that the world is fundamentally just is implied in the very complaint that there has been an injustice. morality philosophy Alain de Botton
1f1de3d The pursuit of personal happiness and the production of healthy children are two radically contrasting projects, which love maliciously confuses us into thinking of as one for a requisite number of years. We should not be surprised by marriages between people who would never have been friends philosophy schopenhauer Alain de Botton
ea0d988 The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists. philosophy religion theology zoology Yann Martel
95c03b3 "Honesty is a moral virtue, a matter of the will. Honesty means willing the truth with the whole of your heart. This demands sacrifice. We have little hope of attaining honesty unless we realize how demanding it is. It demands sacrifice of self-will, self-image, the desire to win, and the comfort of being right. The "honesty" often praised today is usually only emotional honesty with others, not intellectual honesty with one's self; only "letting it all hang out," not asking what is the real truth. Sometimes "honesty" is only a code word for shamelessness. Rarely does it mean the absolute, fanatical, selfless love of truth." morality philosophy truth Peter Kreeft
95c1968 It seems as if, in making a marriage, either the individual or the interest of the species must come off badly. philosophy schopenhauer Alain de Botton
ca777ae Then turn your eyes back on me, and tell me that Cathy and I are still children to be treated with condescension, and are incapable of understanding adult subjects. We haven't remained idle, twiddling our thumbs while you were off having a good time. abandonement adult-subjects away children condescending condescension experience eyes good-time idleness incapable kids philosophy subjects thumbs understand understanding wisdom youth V.C. Andrews
86dbd13 "Life's more important than a living. So many people who make a living are making death, not life. Don't ever join them. They're the gravediggers of our civilization - The safe men. The compromisers. The moneymakers. The muddlers-through. philosophy truth James Hilton
4534264 "Civilization as well as education takes a downward spiral when it ceases to ask "What is truth?" and concerns itself primarily with what is measurable." educational-philosophy philosophy Katherine Paterson
b557b20 a lack of love: between a man and a woman is the announcement that what they might produce would only be a badly organized, unhappy being, wanting in harmony in itself. philosophy schopenhauer Alain de Botton
deeeff8 One had to know Plato personally to appreciate the love he suppressed puritanically for the music, poetry, and drama he censured in his philosophy and censored in his model communities. They moved him too deeply. philosophy Joseph Heller
445e002 "Someone--Plato, I think--once said, 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' " "True. But a life too closely scrutinized will lead to madness, if not suicide." philosophy philosophy-of-life Ken Grimwood
099ad33 Shadow is the blue patch where the light doesn't hit. It is mystery itself, and mystery is the ancients' ultima Thule, the modern explorer's Point of Relative Inaccessibility, that boreal point most distant from all known lands. There the twin oceans of beauty and horror meet. The great glaciers are calving. Ice that sifted to earth as snow in the time of Christ shears from the pack with a roar and crumbles to water. It could be that our instruments have not looked deeply enough. The RNA deep in the mantis's jaw is a beautiful ribbon. Did the crawling Polyphemus moth have in its watery heart one cell, and in that cell one special molecule, and that molecule one hydrogen atom, and round that atom's nucleus one wild, distant electron that split showed a forest, swaying? beauty belief creation curiosity disbelief energy epiphany exploration exultant faith fate fearless fire free freedom gaps god grace growth hallelujah humility illumination intricacy joy joyful joyfulness life-force light mindfulness multiplicity mystery nature philosopher-s-stone philosophy poem poet poetry power praise prayer prayers praying religion religious-diversity science seeing seeking soul spirit stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it tolerance walking watching wonder Annie Dillard
0829536 "Xerxes, I read, 'halted his unwieldy army for days that he might contemplate to his satisfaction' the beauty of a single sycamore. You are Xerxes in Persia. Your army spreads on a vast and arid peneplain...you call to you all your sad captains, and give the order to halt. You have seen the tree with the lights in it, haven't you? You must have. Xerxes buffeted on a plain, ambition drained in a puff. Your men are bewildered...there is nothing to catch the eye in this flatness, nothing but a hollow, hammering sky, a waste of sedge in the lee of windblown rocks, a meager ribbon of scrub willow tracing a slumbering watercourse...and that sycamore. You saw it; you will stand rapt and mute, exalted, remembering or not remembering over a period of days to shade your head with your robe. "He had its form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him remember it the rest of his life." We all ought to have a goldsmith following us around. But it goes without saying, doesn't it, Xerxes, that no gold medal worn around your neck will bring back the glad hour, keep those lights kindled so long as you live, forever present? Pascal saw it; he grabbed pen and paper and scrawled the one word, and wore it sewn in his shirt the rest of his life. I don't know what Pascal saw. I saw a cedar. Xerxes saw a sycamore." beauty belief consciousness creation curiosity disbelief energy enoughness epiphany exploration exultant faith fate fearless fire free freedom gaps god grace growth hallelujah humility illumination intricacy joy joyful joyfulness life-force light living-in-the-present-moment mindfulness multiplicity mystery nature philosopher-s-stone philosophy poem poet poetry power praise prayer prayers praying religion religious-diversity science seeing seeking soul spirit stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it tolerance walking watching wonder Annie Dillard
8dbeb9f I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare - or, if not, some equally brainy bird - who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneakes up behind him with a bit of lead piping philosophy P.G. Wodehouse
7c12fbd El mayor de todos los males es el poder_ contesto el sumo pontifice_, y es nuestro deber borrar cualquier deseo de poder de los corazones y las almas de los hombres. Esa es la mision de la Iglesia, pues es la lucha por el poder lo que hace que los hombres se enfrentan unos a otros. Ahi radica el mal de nuestro mundo; siempre sera un mundo injusto, siempre sera un mundo cruel para los menos afortunados. Quien sabe,,, Es posible que dentro de quinientos anos los hombres dejen de matarse entre si. Feliz dia sera aquel en el que ocurra. Pero el poder forma parte de la misma naturaleza del hombre. Igual que forma parte de la naturaleza de la sociedad que, para mantener unidos a sus subditos, por el bien de su Dios y d su nacion, un rey tenga que mandar ahorcar a quienes no obedezcan su ley. ?Pues como, si no, podria doblegar la voluntad de su subditos? Ademas, no debemos olvidar que la naturaleza humana es tan insondable como el mundo que nos acoge y que no todos los demonios temen el agua bendita. humanity-and-society philosophy religion Mario Puzo
bc9c46b ...(W)hat is remarkable about the Greeks--even pre-philosophically--is that despite the salience of religious rituals in their lives, when it came to the question of what it is that makes an individual human life worth living they didn't look to the immortals but rather approached the question in mortal terms. Their approaching the question of human mattering in human terms is the singularity that creates the conditions for philosophy in ancient Greece, most especially as these conditions were realized in the city-state of Athens. philosophy singularity Rebecca Goldstein
459d246 "Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply a child's wish--and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy--though Darwin himself had not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely, you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now have killed him." philosophy skepticism truth Irvin D. Yalom
29b7067 "The most perfect and satisfactory knowledge is that of perception but this is limited to the absolutely particular, to the individual. The comprehension of the many and the various into *one* representation is possible only through the *concept*, in other words, by omitting the differences; consequently, the concept is a very imperfect way of representing things. The particular, of course, can also be apprehended immediately as a universal, namely when it is raised to the (Platonic) *Idea*; but in this process, which I have analysed in the third book, the intellect passes beyond the limits of individuality and therefore of time; moreover, this is only an exception. These inner and essential imperfections of the intellect are further increased by a disturbance to some extent external to it but yet inevitable, namely, the influence that the *will* exerts on all its operations, as soon as that will is in any way concerned in their result. Every passion, in fact every inclination or disinclination, tinges the objects of knowledge with its colour. Most common of occurrence is the falsification of knowledge brought about by desire and hope, since they show us the scarcely possible in dazzling colours as probable and well-nigh certain, and render us almost incapable of comprehending what is opposed to it. Fear acts in a similar way; every preconceived opinion, every partiality, and, as I have said, every interest, every emotion, and every predilection of the will act in an analogous manner. intellect metaphysics ontology philosophy schopenhauer will Arthur Schopenhauer
4b18ce2 But I was always coming here. I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen. life philosophy spirituality Elizabeth Gilbert
805b7c8 "Once the troublesome mind "begins to compose speeches and dream up arguments, especially if these are clever, it will soon imagine it is doing important work." But if you can surpass those thoughts, Teresa explained, and ascend toward God, "it is a glorious bewilderment, a heavenly madness, in which true wisdom is acquired." philosophy wisdom Elizabeth Gilbert
c950e56 Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years - I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue. My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well - the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born. philosophy spirituality zen-buddhism Elizabeth Gilbert
68a8624 "Simply put, I got pulled through the wormhole of the Absolute, and in that rush I suddenly understood the workings of the universe completely. I left my body, I left the room, I left the planet, I stepped through time and I entered the void. I was inside the void, but I also was the void and I was looking at the void, all at the same time. The void was a place of limitless peace and wisdom, The void was conscious and intelligent. The void was God, which means that I was inside God. But not in a gross, physical way - not like I was Liz Gilbert stuck inside a chunk of God's thigh muscle. I just was part of God. In addition to being God. I was both a tiny piece of the universe and exactly the same size as the universe. ("All know that the drop merges into ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop," wrote the sage Kabir - and I can personally attest now that this is true.) It wasn't hallucinogenic, what I was feeling. It was the most basic of events. It was heaven, yes. It was the deepest love I'd ever experienced, beyond anything I could previously imagined, but it wasn't euphoric. It wasn't exciting. There wasn't enough ego or passion left in me to create euphoria and excitement. It was just obvious. Like when you've been looking at an optical illusion for a long time, straining your eyes to decode the trick, and suddenly your cognizance shifts and there - now you can clearly see it! - the two vases are actually two faces. And once you've seen through the optical illusion, you can never not see it again. "So this is God," I thought. "Congratulations to meet you." -" love philosophy spirituality Elizabeth Gilbert
fef62ac there's no better system than our own morality, not law, not science, not religion... just decency. law morality philosophy religion science Rebecca McNutt
3e7ed5c Only discovering and healing the root causes of each individual's dependency puts an end to dependency. One-on-one sessions are key because the individual issues at the core of dependency are just that- completely individual. addiction-help addiction-philosophy addiction-treatment alcoholism change change-the-world-change-life chris-prenitss healing-addiction holistic-therapy non-12-step non12step one-on-one-therapy passages-malibu passages-ventura philosophy Chris Prentiss
eae2cd9 "Zen is a journey of exploration and a way of living that, in and of itself, does not belong to any one religion or tradition. It is about experiencing life in the here and now and about removing the dualistic distinctions between "I" and "you" between "subject" and "objective", between our spiritual and our ordinary, everyday activities." chris-prentiss happiness inspiration life philosophy zen zen-and-the-art-of-happiness Chris Prentiss
ca718ad Although you may have never sat down and defined what your philosophy is, it is fully operative and working in your life at all times. It deals with what you believe about the world in which you live, about its people and events, about how you affect them. life life-and-living philosophy zen zen-and-the-art-of-happiness Chris Prentiss
ae9533f When you change the way you see and interpret events, suddenly everything will be different for you. Everything will make sense. chris-prentiss inspiration inspirational life passages-malibu passages-ventura perspective philosophy Chris Prentiss
aa31634 Every belief that you hold manifests itself in some manner by either causing you to take some form of action or by preventing you from taking action. If you don't believe something is possible, you won't even attempt it. happiness life metaphysics philosophy zen zen-and-the-art-of-happiness Chris Prentiss
5aeb05c Stress comes from the way you relate to events or situations. life philosophy stress stress-management zen zen-and-the-art-of-happiness Chris Prentiss
2b30b9d Believe that is cure is possible for you. Discover and heal the underlying causes with a holistic recovery program. Adopt a philosophy based on what is true in the Universe. addiction-cure addiction-free addiction-treatment-center alcohol-addiction-treatment change change-the-world chris-prentiss curing-addiction drug-addiction-treatment freedom good-books happiness healing health holistic-health holistic-treatment inspiration inspire life non-12-step non12step passages-malibu passages-ventura philosophy recommended-reading renew self-help self-improvement sober sober-living sobriety treatment-program universe wisdom Chris Prentiss
dca1b95 The events that occur in my life are workout situations. They are there for my benefit so I can become strong and gain wisdom and information by working my way through those situations. addiction-and-recovery addiction-free chris-prentiss chris-prentiss-quotes guilt happiness joy life love pain passages-malibu passages-ventura peace philosophy philosophy-of-life wisdom Chris Prentiss
36e7e05 If you feel depressed for an hour, you've produced approximately eighteen billion new cells that have more receptors calling out for depressed-type peptides and fewer calling out for feel-good peptides. depression happiness mindfulness philosophy zen zen-and-the-art-of-happiness Chris Prentiss
60c10bd What we call coincidences, accidental and remarkable events occurring at the same time, are actually circumstances and events that have come into your life to serve a purpose- and that purpose is to benefit you. chris-prentiss inspiration inspirational life life-purpose non-12-step-program passage-ventura passages-malibu perspective philosophy quotes Chris Prentiss
9bce623 The moment you make the internal changes necessary to obtain your goal, the outside world changes instantly. passages-malibu philosophy philosophy-of-life self-help self-improvement Chris Prentiss
9fa1bd9 If we are to know ourselves, philosophy needs to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the sciences of mind. human-nature philosophy science-of-mind self-knowledge George Lakoff
9367dc8 A serious appreciation of cognitive science requires us to rethink philosophy from the beginning, in a way that would put it more in touch with the reality of how we think. ... Unless we know our cognitive unconscious fully and intimately, we can neither know ourselves nor truly understand the basis of our moral judgments, our conscious deliberations, and our philosophy. philosophy George Lakoff
97aec45 How do you explain a world that gifts evil men with privilege and wealth and looks the other way while they torment and abuse the weakest members of society? human-nature injustice philosophy privilege wealth C.S. Harris
d62a097 Well, I did my best,' said Amlis, in a self-deprecating purr. 'But I can tell when a challenge is hopeless. Anyway, it's not your minds I need to change.' And he glanced round at the contents of the ship's hull, acknowledging the scale of the slaughter and its commercial purpose. philosophy vegan vegetarian Michel Faber
1c554b5 "... rather than God being "out there" in the heights, God is known in the depths of personal experience." philosophy religion spirituality Marcus J. Borg
3df5d42 "Resurrection" does not mean resumption of previous existence but entry into a different kind of existence." philosophy religion spirituality Marcus J. Borg
86b5fb6 La lumiere des torches ressemble a la sagesse des laches; elle eclaire mal, parce qu'elle tremble. philosophy Victor Hugo
3bdbdf0 the pursuit of love is like falconry.- chronicle of death foretold philosophy Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
43d3c7b And if your master truly loved you, he would tell you that. In order to escape the bounds of earthly experience, you bind yourself to a master. Bound is bound. If your master really loved you, he would not demand your devotion. He would set you free--from himself, first of all. philosophy Tom Robbins
6de268a Je voulais vous exposer mon livre aussi succinctement que possible; mais je vois qu'il me faudra y joindre encore quantite d'explications verbales. Mon expose exigera donc au moins dix soirees d'apres le nombre de chapitres de mon livre. (Il y eut quelques rires.) De plus, je dois vous prevenir que mon systeme n'est pas completement acheve. (Nouveaux rires.) Je me suis embrouille dans mes propres donnees et ma conclusion se trouve en contradiction directe avec l'idee fondamentale du systeme. Partant de la liberte illimitee, j'aboutis au despotisme illimite. J'ajoute a cela, cependant, qu'il ne peut y avoir d'autre solution du probleme que la mienne. despotism les-démons liberty philosophy russia Fyodor Dostoyevsky
649dc4c "Of all the conceptions of the divine, of all the language Jesus could put on the lips of the God character in the story he tells, that's what he has the Father say. "You are always with me, and everything I have is yours." ... Millions of people in our world were told that God so loved the world, that God sent his son to save the world, and that if they accept and believe in Jesus, then they'll be able to have a relationship with God... But there's more. Millions have been taught that if they don't believe, if they don't accept in the right way, that is, the way the person telling them "the gospel" does, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God will have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell... A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormentor who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony... if your God is loving one second and cruel the next, if your God will punish people for all eternity for sins committed in a few short years, no amount of clever marketing or compelling language or good music or great coffee will be able to disguise that one, true, glaring, untenable, acceptable, awful reality... sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting the gospel is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn't safe, loving, or good. It doesn't make sense, it can't be reconciled, and so they say no... God creates, because the endless joy and peace and shared life at the heart of this God knows no other way. Jesus invites us into THAT relationship, the one at the center of the universe... so when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will "get into heaven," that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club. The good news is better than that. (excerpts all from chapter 7)" monster-god philosophy theology universality Rob Bell
3b637e7 When we characterize talk as hot air, we mean that what comes out of the speaker's mouth is only that. It is mere vapor. His speech is empty, without substance or content. His use of language, accordingly, does not contribute to the purpose it purports to serve. No more information is communicated than if the speaker had merely exhaled. There are similarities between hot air and excrement, incidentally, which make hot air seem an especially suitable equivalent for bullshit. Just as hot air is speech that has been emptied of all informative content, so excrement is matter from which everything nutritive has been removed. Excrement may be regarded as the corpse of nourishment, what remains when the vital elements in food have been exhausted. [...] In any event, it cannot serve the purposes of sustenance, any more than hot air can serve those of communication. critical-examination critical-thinking depiction logic marketing philosophy reality speech truth Harry G. Frankfurt
657245a "I dispelled my invisibility for a few seconds in his full view, a finger resting provocatively on my lower lip, giving him a come-hither look under a streetlight. His jaw and the bottle of Zubrowka dropped at the same time. It shattered, drawing his eyes to the sidewalk, and I took the opportunity afforded by his distraction to disappear again. "That was mean," Oberon said, watching the man look wildly around for me and pawing at his eyes as if to clear them. Why? I asked. I've done him no harm. "Yes, you have. You will haunt him for the rest of his life. I know from experience." You're haunted by someone flashing you on a street corner? "No. It was a dog park. Atticus and I were just arriving and she was leaving." Oh, here we go. "She was so fit and her coat was tightly curled and she had a perfect pouf on the end of her tail like a tennis ball. I saw her for maybe five seconds, until she hopped into a Honda and her human drove her away. And now I can't see a Honda without seeing her." But that's a good thing, isn't it? Kind of romantic? A vision of perfection you can treasure forever, unspoiled by reality. "Well, I don't know. In reality I'd like to try spoiling her, if she was in the mood." Look, Oberon, that man is lonely. He's too skinny and sweaty, and I'm willing to bet you five cows that he's socially awkward or he wouldn't be staggering drunk at this hour. But now, for the rest of his life, he will remember the na**d woman on the street who looked at him with desire. When people treat him like something untouchable, he will have that memory to comfort him. "Or obsess over. What if he starts wandering the streets every night looking for you?" Then he's misunderstood the nature of beauty. It doesn't stay, except in our minds. "Oh! I think I see. That's true, Clever Girl! Sausage never stays, because I eat it, but it's always beautiful in my mind." granuaile hunted kevin-hearne oberon philosophy Kevin Hearne
da0c130 "I've never run this far before," he said at one point. "Or this fast for so long. It's better than sticking your head out a car window, that's for sure." My theory is that Oberon might be a master of Tao. He always sees what we filter out. The wind and the grass and something in the sky, sun or moon, shining on our backs as we run: They are gifts that humans toss away like socks on Christmas morning, because we see them every day and don't think of them as gifts anymore. But new socks are always better than old socks. And the wind and grass and sky, I think, are better seen with new eyes than jaded ones. I hope my eyes will never grow old." beauty dogs granuile hunted inspirational kevin-hearne nature new oberon old philosophy taoism Kevin Hearne
5f59248 This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.' 'No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day? philosophy robin-hobb royal-assassin thoughts Robin Hobb
fa10d28 io, mio caro, non credo nell'amore universale. L'amore esiste in dosi modiche. Si possono amare forse cinque fra uomini e donne, dieci magari, talvolta financo quindici. E anche questo solo assai di rado. Ma se uno arriva e mi dice che ama tutto il Terzo mondo, o ama l'America Latina, o ama il sesso femminile, quello non e amore ma retorica. Pura demagogia. Slogan. Non siamo nati per amare piu di una manciata di persone. human-nature humanity jewish jews love-hurts love-quotes philosophical philosophy society Amos Oz
e54f223 "To doubt the literal meaning of the words of Jesus or Moses incurs hostility from most people, but it's just a fact that if Jesus or Moses were to appear today, unidentified, with the same message he spoke many years ago, his mental stability would be challenged. This isn't because what Jesus or Moses said was untrue or because modern society is in error but simply because the route they chose to reveal to others has lost relevance and comprehensibility. "Heaven above" fades from meaning when space-age consciousness asks, Where is "above"? But the fact that the old routes have tended, because of language rigidity, to lose their everyday meaning and become almost closed doesn't mean that the mountain is no longer there. It's there and will be there as long as consciousness exists." meaning philosophy words zen Robert M. Pirsig
57b6363 I think therefore I am. Does that mean 'I feel therefore I'm not'? But only through feeling can I get at thinking. jeanette-winterson literature philosophy Jeanette Winterson
f6d729a What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. american-history awareness chautauqua consciousness enlightenment entertainment media philosophy Robert M. Pirsig
7afeabd To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions. perspective philosophy rational romantic Robert M. Pirsig
4a07bd7 Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you'll see the difference. The craftsman isn't ever following a single line of instruction. He's making decisions as he goes along. For that reason he'll be absorbed and attentive to what he's doing even though he doesn't deliberately contrive this. His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony. He isn't following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are changing together in a progression of changes until his mind's at rest at the same time the material's right. flow philosophy professional quality-of-work style workman Robert M. Pirsig
66c2290 What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who're solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution. modern-problems philosophy rational solutions thinking thoughts Robert M. Pirsig
5dd9611 During periods of root expansion things have always looked as confused and topsy-turvy and purposeless as they do now. The whole Renaissance is supposed to have resulted from the topsy-turvy feeling caused by Columbus' discovery of a new world. It just shook people up. The topsy-turviness of that time is recorded everywhere. There was nothing in the flat-earth views of the Old and New Testaments that predicted it. Yet people couldn't deny it. The only way they could assimilate it was to abandon the entire medieval outlook and enter into a new expansion of reason. civilization discoveries evolution philosophy renaissance Robert M. Pirsig
7efa1cb The machine itself receives some of the same feelings. With over 27,000 on it it's getting to be something of a high-miler, and old-timer, although there are plenty of older ones running. But over the miles, and I think most cyclists will agree with this, you pick up certain feelings about an individual machine that are unique for that one individual machine and no other. A friend who owns a cycle of the same make, model and even same year brought it over for a repair, and when I test rode it afterward it was hard to believe it had come from the same factory years ago. You could see that long ago it had settled into its own kind of feel and ride and sound, completely different from mine. No worse, but different. I suppose you could call that a personality. Each machine has its own, unique personality which probably could be defined as the intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it. This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is the personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance. The new ones start out as good-looking strangers, and depending on how they are treated, degenerate rapidly into bad-acting grouches or even cripples, or else turn into healthy, good-natured, long-lasting friends. differences mechanics motorcycle philosophy Robert M. Pirsig
a2d40b1 Now we've a real intellectual impasse. Our reason, which is supposed to make things more intelligible, seems to be making them less intelligible, and when reason thus defeats its own purpose something has to be changed in the structure of our reason itself. intelligence logic philosophy rationale reason reasoning thinking Robert M. Pirsig
31adf83 If your mind is truly, profoundly stuck, then you may be much better off than when it was loaded with ideas. The solution to the problem often at first seems unimportant or undesirable, but the state of stuckness allows it, in time, to assumes its true importance. It seemed small because our previous rigid evaluation which led to the stuckness made it small. But now consider the fact that no matter how hard you try to hang on to it, this stuckness is bound to disappear. Your mind will naturally and freely move toward a solution. Unless you are a real master at staying stuckk you can't prevent this. The fear of stuckness is needless because the longer you stay stuck the more you see the Quality-reality that gets you unstuck every time. What's been getting you stuck is the running from the stuckness through the cars of your train of knowledge looking for a solution that is out in front of the train. Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all real understanding. getting-stuck-in-your-head philosophy thinking-process Robert M. Pirsig
82c3b69 - Kato dete izpitvakh s'shchoto po klonite na golemite d'rveta. Da stoish prilepen do edin stvol, tolkova dreven, che i nai-drevnata choveshka pamet blednee pred nego, ti vnushava s'shchoto chuvstvo za miasto v sveta. бард bulgarian elder human longbow martin memory old philosopher philosophy riftwar saga sea tree български война древен дълголъкия дървета място памет разлом реймънд свят фийст философ човек чувство Raymond E. Feist
7c081fb It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow. gender light philosophy women Ursula K. Le Guin
09db655 Man is a dubious mixture of mind and matter; since the mind unlocks recognition of the eternal to him, while matter pulls him down and binds him to the transitory, he should strive away from the senses and toward the mind if he wishes to elevate his life and give it meaning. mind philosophy Hermann Hesse
ec91f5f Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form... He is much more an experiment and a transition. He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. philosophy Hermann Hesse
1dc4b66 "Common sense is not a single unique conception, identical in time and space. It is the "folklore" of philosophy, and, like folklore, it takes countless different forms. Its most fundamental character is that it is a conception which, even in the brain of one individual, is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential." -- philosophy thought Antonio Gramsci
c312e96 The physical method becomes a philosophy when it asserts there is no higher knowledge than the empirical knowledge of scientific phenomena. The mathematical method becomes a philosophy when it asserts that some higher knowledge is needed to explain scientific facts, and that higher knowledge is mathematics. philosophy science Fulton J. Sheen
f2e1113 Certain things can only be understood if we take the trouble to retrace their origins. philosophy José Saramago
d366b72 Ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis: where you are worth nothing, there you should want nothing philosophy samuel-beckett Shane Weller
1e65201 Happiness is not our goal. The achievement of happiness deflects us from our true destiny which is the utter realization of self. philosophy Timothy Findley
17a985c Marianne replaces the yogurt pot in the freezer now and asks Joanna if she finds it strange, to be paid for her hours at work - to exchange, in other words, blocks of her extremely limited time on this earth for the human invention known as money. philosophy work Sally Rooney
9847512 It is not at all coincidental that Darwinian psychology has the same difficulty explaining the unity and integration of human reasoning as Darwinian biology has explaining the unity and integration of irreducibly complex functions. Practical and theoretical reasoning is often irreducibly complex. A given argument has several well-matched, interacting reasons, and the removal of any one of them makes the argument break down. philosophy psychology Angus Menuge
a89cf21 "Human nature inclines us to have recourse to petition for the purpose of obtaining from another, especially from a person of higher rank, what we hope to receive from him. So prayer is recommended to men, that by it they may obtain from God what they hope to secure from Him. But the reason why prayer is necessary for obtaining something from a man is not the same as the reason for its necessity when there is question of obtaining a favor from God. Prayer is addressed to man, first, to lay bare the desire and the need of the petitioner, and secondly, to incline the mind of him to whom the prayer is addressed to grant the petition. These purposes have no place in the prayer that is sent up to God. When we pray we do not intend to manifest our needs or desires to God, for He knows all things. The Psalmist says to God: "Lord, all my desire is before Thee" and in the Gospel we are told: "Your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things." Again, the will of God is not influenced by human words to will what He had previously not willed. For, as we read in Numbers 23:19, "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor as the son of man, that He should be changed"; nor is God moved to repentance, as we are assured in 1 Kings 15:29. Prayer, then, for obtaining something from God, is necessary for man on account of the very one who prays, that he may reflect on his shortcomings and may turn his mind to desiring fervently and piously what he hopes to gain by his petition. In this way he is rendered fit to receive the favor." god metaphysics philosophy prayer religion superstition Thomas Aquinas
e739ff4 Excellent papier. Rien a voir avec les pates mecaniques d'aujourd'hui... Vous savez quelle est la duree de vie moyenne d'un livre imprime a l'heure actuelle ?... Dis lui, Pablo. - Soixante-dix ans, repondit l'autre avec rancoeur, comme si Corso etait le coupable. Soixante-dix miserables annees. Le frere aine cherchait quelque chose parmi les objets disperses sur la table. Finalement, il s'empara d'une loupe speciale a fort grossissement et l'approcha du livre. - Dans moins d'un siecle, murmura-t-il tandis qu'il soulevait une page pour l'etudier a contre-jour en fermant un oeil, presque tout ce qui se trouve aujourd'hui dans les librairies aura disparu. Mais ces volumes imprimes il y a deux cents ou cinq cents ans, demeureront intacts... Nous avons les livres, comme le monde, que nous meritons... N'est-ce pas, Pablo ? - Des livres de merde pour un monde de merde. books handmade-books literature paper philosophy world Arturo Pérez-Reverte
67b225f ...is not all philosophy but preparation for a serene dying? aging death libanius mortality philosophy philosophy-of-death Gore Vidal
dfb42b2 no religion was superior because they all brought people closer to God philosophy religion Mitch Albom
cf1362a The failure of Hellenism has been, largely, a matter of organization. Rome never tried to impose any sort of worship upon the countries it conquered and civilized; in fact, quite the contrary, Rome was eclectic. All religions were given an equal opportunity and even Isis--after some resistance--was worshipped at Rome. As a result we have a hundred important gods and a dozen mysteries. Certain rites are--or were--supported by the state because they involved the genius of Rome. But no attempt was ever made to coordinate the worship of Zeus on the Capitol with, let us say, the Vestals who kept the sacred fire in the old forum. As time passed our rites became, and one must admit it bluntly, merely form, a reassuring reminder of the great age of the city, a token gesture to the old gods who were thought to have founded and guided Rome from a village by the Tiber to world empire. Yet from the beginning, there were always those who mocked. A senator of the old Republic once asked an auger how he was able to get through a ceremony of divination without laughing. I am not so light-minded, though I concede that many of our rites have lost their meaning over the centuries; witness those temples at Rome where certain verses learned by rote are chanted year in and year out, yet no one, including the priests, knows what they mean, for they are in the early language of the Etruscans, long since forgotten. As the religious forms of the state became more and more rigid and perfunctory, the people were drawn to the mystery cults, many of them Asiatic in origin. At Eleusis or in the various caves of Mithras, they were able to get a vision of what this life can be, as well as a foretaste of the one that follows. There are, then, three sorts of religious experiences. The ancient rites, which are essentially propitiatory. The mysteries, which purge the soul and allow us to glimpse eternity. And philosophy, which attempts to define not only the material world but to suggest practical ways to the good life, as well as attempting to synthesize (as does so beautifully) all true religion in a single comprehensive system. 362 eclecticism ecumenism formalism hellenism julian mystery-religions paganism philosophy religion Gore Vidal
1f602bf "No I do not like blaming. Because for me it's enough if someone is other than bad--not too much out of hand, conscious at least of the justice that helps the city, a healthy man. No I shall not lay blame. Because fools are a species that never ends. greek philosophy poetry translation Simonides of Ceos
689f986 Philosophy is linguistic' may mean at least six different things. (1) The study of language is a useful philosophical tool. (2) It is the only philosophical tool. (3) Language is the only subject matter of philosophy. (4) Necessary truths are established by linguistic convention. (5) Man is fundamentally a language using animal. (6) Everyday language has a status of privilege over technical and formal systems. These six propositions are independent of each other. (1) has been accepted in practice by every philosopher since Plato. Concerning the other five, philosophers have been and are divided, including philosophers within the analytic tradition. In my own opinion (1) and (5) are true, and the other four false. But I do not argue for this sweeping generalization anywhere in the present book. language philosophy Anthony Kenny
c8ab93f Sherrie described atheism as a positive system of belief--one based on data, exploration and observation rather than scripture, creed and prayer. Atheists believe that human life is a chemical phenomenon, that our first parents were super-novas that happened billions of years ago--that humans are inexplicable miracles in a universe of structured chaos. Atheists believe that when we die, we will turn into organic debris which will continue cycling for billions of years in various incarnations. Sherrie explained that atheists appreciate life unfathomably because it is going to end. No one who takes atheism seriously dies without hope. atheist caitlin-moran carl-sagan dying hope philosophy richard-dawkins science-and-religion science-vs-religion Israel Morrow
a0714ff While he joined eagerly in the contemporary intellectual battles, philosophy was, for Spinoza, not a weapon but a way of life, a sacred order whose servants were transported to a supreme and certain blessedness. philosophy Roger Scruton
d979d81 "For the grace of bearing life's inevitable evils is itself a good life philosophy A.C. Grayling
6a93157 El muchacho le explico, como pronunciando un sermon, que el mundo de los hombres era vil y estaba lleno de mentiras. En el, solo el arte conducia a la vida verdadera y eterna, y el mismo era grande porque sabia lo que se encontraba mas alla de las puertas del arte. La muchacha no podia dudar de la nobleza de sus palabras. life love philosophy Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
d7e47cb Honor,' he said firmly. 'I have great honor. So will you. But you will find that that is not the same as power. philosophy power wisdom Lois Lowry
657c8f9 We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar's view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone. philosophy Peter singer
edf6aeb Un genio conversa con otro genio cara a cara, lo que no solo supone una alegria reciproca, sino tambien una dicha para el universo entero. Esa alegria existe y el universo existe tambien. El dia que los genios no se reconozcan unos a otros, el mundo se oscurecera y la Tierra dejara de dar vueltas sobre su eje knolwedge philosophy Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
9d85e1d "Well," Harry said, "look at it this way: Suppose you were an intelligent bacterium floating in space, and you came upon one of our communication satellites, in orbit around the Earth. You would think, What a strange, alien object this is, let's explore it. Suppose you opened it up and crawled inside. You would find it very interesting in there, with lots of huge things to puzzle over. But eventually you might climb into one of the fuel cells, and the hydrogen would kill you. intelligence life-lessons misapprehension philosophy Michael Crichton
8433a07 "You must convince your chiefs that what you're telling 'em is important, which ain't difficult, since they want to believe you, having chiefs of their own to satisfy; make as much mystery of your methods as you can; hint what a thoroughgoing ruffian you can be in a good cause, but never forget that innocence shines brighter than any virtue, "Flashman? Extraordinary fellow - kicks 'em in the crotch with the heart of a child"; remember that silence frequently passes for shrewdness, and that while suppressio veri is a damned good servant, suggestio falsi is a perilous master." experience hedonism human-nature knowledge-of-self philosophy the-way-the-world-works wisdom George MacDonald Fraser
e24a95d Take this moment right here, and ask yourself, What is now lacking? philosophy Kim Stanley Robinson
1825384 Human beings, Lucretius thought, must not drink in the poisonous belief that their souls are only part of the world temporarily and they are heading somewhere else. That belief will only spawn in them a destructive relation to the environment in which they live the only lives they have. philosophy science Stephen Greenblatt
231af36 "Despite my deep unease about animal advocates working for things we don't want and asking for changes we don't believe in, I am not an "abolitionist." First, the abolition of animal slavery will no more end speciesism by itself than the abolition of American slavery ended racism. To change the world, I think we should aim higher. Second, I'm increasingly convinced that no matter who uses the term, it hides a slur. When used to refer to others, it connotes zealotry and obstructionism, and when taken as self-definition, it is seen as an attack by anyone who does not apply it to herself. Yes, it's a highly defensible moral philosophy, right up there with Peter Singer's application of Utilitarianism to animal liberation, and Tom Regan's Theory of Rights, but like those other intellectual concepts, it's useful only so far as it engenders right action." advocacy animal-rights grassroots philosophy veganism Sarahjane Blum
0865c94 The job of the terrorists was to penetrate into our subconscious. This had always been the aim of writers, but the terrorists took it a step further. They were the writers of our age. Don DeLillo said this many years before 9/11. The images they created spread around the globe, colonising our our subconscious minds. The tangible outcome of the attack, the numbers of dead and injured, the material destruction, meant nothing. It was the images that were important. The more iconic the images they managed to create, the more successful their actions. The attack on the World Trade Centre was the most successful of all time. There weren't that many dead, only a couple of thousand, as against the six hundred thousand who died in the first two days of the Battle Of Flanders in the autumn of 1914, yet the images were so iconic and powerful that the effect on us was just as devastating, perhaps more so, since we lived in a culture of images. Planes and skyscrapers. Icarus and Babel. They wanted into our dreams. Everyone did. Our inner beings were the final market. Once they were conquered, we would be sold. images philosophy subconcious terrorism world-war-one Karl Ove Knausgaard
ff93de4 "There's the claim that the only progress made is in posing problems that scientists can answer. That philosophy never has the means to answer problems--it's just biding its time till the scientists arrive on the scene. You hear this quite often. There is, among some scientists, a real anti-philosophical bias. The sense that philosophy will eventually disappear. But there's a lot of philosophical progress, it's just a progress that's very hard to see. It's very hard to see because we see animal-rights bigotry human-rights philosophy prejudice progress science thinking thought Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
7df9ae6 It is often said that we live in a youth culture. It's a lie. We live in an old culture. We idolize youth because we are old. We are tired and bored. Ancient cultures respected the old because those cultures were young. They were not bored. culture philosophy youth Peter Kreeft
c28af66 The Enlightenment, finally, invented progressive 'history' as an inner-worldly purgatory in order to develop the conditions of possibility of a perfected 'society'. This provided the required setting for the aggressive social theology of the Modern Age to drive out the political theology of the imperial eras. What was the Enlightenment in its deep structure if not an attempt to translate the ancient rhyme on learning and suffering - mathein pathein - into a collective and species-wide phenomenon? Was its aim not to persuade the many to expose themselves to transitional ordeals that would precede the great optimization of all things? enlightenment enlightenment-quotes optimization philosophy political-theology purgatory theology Peter Sloterdijk
96fc093 What early Christianity meant by 'faith' (pistis) was initially nothing other than running ahead and clinging to a model or idea whose attainability was still uncertain. Faith is purely anticipatory, in the sense that it already has an effect when it mobilizes the existence of the anticipatory towards the goal through anticipation. In analogy for the placebo effect, one would have to call this the movebo effect. anticipation faith philosophy theology Peter Sloterdijk
399722f Via the mediation of the Enlightenment, this movement had changed from a hobby among a tiny literate elite and their secretaries, an ostentatious amusement among princely and mercantile art patrons and their masterly suppliers (who established a first 'art system'), into a national, a European, indeed a planetary matter. In order to spread from the few to the many, the renaissance had to discard its humanistic exterior and reveal itself as the return of ancient mass culture. The true renaissance question, reformulated in the terminology of practical philosophy - namely, whether other forms of life are possible and permissible for us alongside and after Christianity, especially ones whose patterns are derived from Greek and Roman (perhaps even Egyptian or Indian) antiquity - was no longer a secret discourse or an academic exercise in the nineteenth century, but rather an epochal passion, an inescapable pro nobis. enlightenment philosophy rennaisance Peter Sloterdijk
99b754c As a system of hybrid communicating vessels, the human interior consists of paradoxical or autogenous hollow bodies that are at once tight and leaky, that must alternate between the roles of container and content, and which simultaneously have properties of inner and outer walls. philosophy Peter Sloterdijk
65f6538 The spaces that humans allow to contain them have their own history - albeit a history that has never been told, and whose heroes are eo ipso not humans themselves, but rather the topoi and spheres as whose function humans flourish, and from which they fall if their unfolding fails. philosophy topoi Peter Sloterdijk
83f29e8 Nothing in the Grimmerie on how to depose a tyrant - nothing useful... Nothing there that described why men and women could turn out so horrible. Or so wonderful - if that ever happens anymore. philosophy Gregory Maguire
8e3c326 "Giddy with each other and the wine, they strolled outside through the Presidio, the old fort now housing restaurants and galleries. Jess explained that she wanted to devise a matrix for scarcity and abundance, frugality and profligacy. She thought that sweetness represented, and in some periods misrepresented, a sense of surplus and shared pleasure. "I don't think taste is purely biological," she said. "I think it's economically, historically, and culturally constructed as well. Sweetness means different things depending on availability, custom, farming, trade..." She was shivering, and George took off his jacket. "Here, sweetness." He helped her into it and laughed at the way her hands disappeared inside the sleeves. "Context is key- so the question is, What carries over? What can we still know about sweet and sour? Bitterness. What persists from generation to generation? Do we taste the same things?" He kissed her, sucking her lower lip and then her tongue. "I think so," he said. "Yes." philosophy sweetness tastes true-love Allegra Goodman
0a641dc "Zabuna o odnosu izmedu poimanja osobe i covjeka moze uzrokovati golemu stetu. Americki Vrhovni sud dvaput je pokazao da mu je prijeko potrebna lekcija iz filozofije jer ne shvaca da ljudska bica spadaju pod osobe, a ne obrnuto, da su ljudska bica osobe te kao takve posjeduju temeljna ljudska prava. Dred Scott proglasio je crnce nepotpunim osobama opravdavsi tako ropstvo i provodeci povratak odbjeglih robova kao da se radi o vlasnistvu, a ne o osobama. Time im je oduzeo drugo temeljno ljudsko pravo, pravo na slobodu. Jedno stoljece kasnije slucaj oduzeo je nerodenoj djeci prvo osnovno pravo svake osobe, pravo na zivot. Ovo se temelji na filozofiji koja je zapravo identicna nacistickoj: drzava uzima sebi moc da proglasi jednu vrstu ljudskih bica ne-osobama [bilo crnce, bilo Zidove, bilo nerodene]. Osim sto je rijec o prestrasnu moralu, radi se i o jako losoj logici. Naime, smatra "osobe" uzom kategorijom od "ljudskih bica". Postojanje andela pokazuje da se zapravo radi o visoj kategoriji." christianity philosophy pro-life unborn-child Peter Kreeft
822c82b If I could, I would begin this book by telling you what Life is. But unfortunately I do not know what Life is. The only consolation I can find is in the fact that nobody else knows either. philosophy Upton Sinclair
50f8f3d "I asked, "You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell - the destinations - are the same thing anyway?" "Same - same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy on journey." I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is..." "Love, too," he said." hell life philosophy spirituality Elizabeth Gilbert
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