|
18e6373
|
A strong personal philosophy does more than sustain us through the tragedies of life. It also stains us daily in everything we think and do. It gives us optimism and hope.
|
|
philosophy
zen
zen-and-the-art-of-happiness
|
Chris Prentiss |
|
2de9d74
|
If you have experienced recurring situations in your life that are unpleasant, know that there is something you are supposed to be getting from those situations that you have not been getting and that the moment you get it, those situations will pass out of your life, not to return.
|
|
chris-prentiss
life-improvement
passages-malibu
philosophy
philosophy-of-life
self-help
self-improvement
|
Chris Prentiss |
|
47d87e9
|
In 1935, when there were no other programs, the founders of AA, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, stepped up to the plate and took action to help a crippled population. All credit for the establishment of their wonderful, life-saving group goes to them and to those who came after them who have continued the tradition. However, there are not among the estimated two or three million who attend twelve-step meetings.
|
|
12-steps
addiction-treatment
addiction-treatment-center
alcohol-abuse
change
change-the-world
chris-prentiss
drug-abuse
passages-malibu
philosophy
tradition
twelve-step
|
Chris Prentiss |
|
1c6458d
|
Who is happier, those who are aware, and doubt, or those who are sure of what they believe in, and have never doubted or questioned it? The answer, she had concluded, was that this had nothing to do with happiness, which came upon you like the weather, determined by your personlaity.
|
|
deep-thoughts
happiness
personality
philosophical-musings
philosophy
weather
|
Alexander McCall Smith |
|
a20e3dc
|
The occurrence of a highly improbable event is the equivalent of the nonoccurrence of a highly probable one
|
|
philosophy
|
Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
|
3bdf0b9
|
The life of our bodies is only a constantly prevented dying, an ever deferred death...Every breath we draw wards off death that constantly impinges on us, in this way we struggle with it every second...Death is far more familiar than we generally think. Not only have we a taste of death daily in our sleep or in states of unconsciousness, but we have all passed through an eternity of nonbeing before we existed.
|
|
philosophy
|
Irvin D. Yalom |
|
862f0a6
|
Life can be compared to a piece of embroidered material of which, every-one in the first half of his time, comes to see the top side, but in the second half, the reverse side. The latter is not so beautiful but it is more instructive because it enables one to see how the threads are connected together.
|
|
philosophy
|
Irvin D. Yalom |
|
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 |
|
6dd79f2
|
In fact, the Nazis did not have a euthanasia program, in the proper sense of the word. Their so-called euthanasia program was not motivated by concern for the suffering of those killed. If it had been, they would not have kept their operations secret, deceived relatives about the cause of death of those killed, or exempted from the program certain privileged classes, such as veterans of the armed services or relatives of the euthanasia staff. Nazi 'euthanasia' was never voluntary and often was involuntary rather than nonvoluntary. 'Doing away with useless mouths' - a phrase used by those in charge - gives a better idea of the objectives of the program than 'mercy-killing'. Both racial origin and ability to work were among the factors considered in the selection of patients to be killed. It was the Nazi belief in the importance of maintaining a pure Aryan Volk - a quasi-mystical racist concept that was thought of as more important than mere individuals' lives - that made both the so-called euthanasia program and later the entire holocaust possible. Proposals for the legalization of euthanasia, on the other hand, are based on respect for autonomy and the goal of avoiding pointless suffering.
|
|
euthanasia
morality
nazi
philosophy
|
Peter Singer |
|
b3a36b1
|
One must die to an old way of being in order to enter a new way of being... salvation is resurrection to a new way of being here and now.
|
|
philosophy
religion
spirituality
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
b1322b1
|
"The relationship among faith, knowledge, and belief is suggested by a story involving the famous depth psychologist Carl Jung. In the last year of his life, he was interviewed for a BBC television documentary. The interviewer asked him, "Dr. Jung, do you believe in God?" Jung said, "Believe? I do not believe in God - I know." The point: the more one knows God, the less faith as belief is involved. But faith as belief still has a role: it can provide a basis for responding even when one does not know for sure, and it can also get one through periods of time in which firsthand experiences of God are lacking."
|
|
philosophy
religion
spirituality
|
Marcus J. Borg |
|
bfec73e
|
"Vladimir Kush , Shell Bronze , Lovers Entwined (painting) "Why, then, does the man in love hang with complete abandon on the eyes of his chosen one, and is ready to make every sacrifice for her? Because it is his immortal part that longs for her; it is always the mortal part alone that longs for everything else. That eager and even ardent longing, directed to a particular woman, is therefore an immediate pledge of the indestructibility of the kernel of our true nature..."
|
|
philosophy
|
Arthur Schopenhauer |
|
bb69c4f
|
I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious to my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important
|
|
iris-murdoch
philosophy
|
Iris Murdoch |
|
0f342d7
|
There is nothing noble about being superior to some other person. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.
|
|
philosophy
|
Robin S. Sharma |
|
9579388
|
Men have special needs too: for example, a man generally needs a higher daily intake of calories than a woman. But this has never been though of as a sign of men's inferiority to women; if anything, it is a sign of strength and an entitlement to extra food.
|
|
philosophy
politics
|
Jonathan Wolff |
|
848603c
|
l 'ryd 'n 'fkr'w 'n 'sh`r 'w 'n 'tHrk, kl shy ytmzq wymwt, fkhTr ly `l~ sbyl l'ml 'nny s'jd ldhlk sbb `Dwy.
|
|
novel
philosophy
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
44744da
|
At hun er i live er bra, men det er ikke det det handler om.
|
|
philosophy
suicide
suicide-attempt
|
Nick Hornby |
|
f3d5edd
|
"We all live as if it is better to seek peace instead of war, to tell the truth instead of lying, to care and nurture rather than to destroy. We believe that these choices are not pointless, that it matters which way we choose to live. Yet if the Cosmic Bench is truly empty, then "who sez" that one choice is better than the others? We can argue about it, but it's just pointless arguing, endless litigation. If the Bench is truly empty, then the whole span of human civilization, even if it lasts a few million years, will be just an infinitesimally brief spark in relation to the oceans of dead time that preceded it and will follow it. There will be no one around to remember any of it. Whether we are loving or cruel in the end would make no difference at all. Once we realize this situation there are two options. One is that we can simply refuse to think out the implications of all this. We can hold on to our intellectual belief in an empty Bench and yet live as if our choices are meaningful and as if there is a difference between love and cruelty. Why would we do that? A cynic might say that this is a way of "having one's cake and eating it, too." That is, you can get the benefit of having a God without the cost of following him. But there is no integrity in that. The other option is to recognize that you do know there is a God. You could accept the fact that you live as if beauty and love have meaning, as if there is meaning in life, as if human beings have inherent dignity--all because you know God exists. It is dishonest to live as if he is there and yet fail to acknowledge the one who has given you all these gifts."
|
|
philosophy
religion
|
Timothy J. Keller |
|
ade43df
|
One contradiction of the human heart is this: God refuses to see any one person as unique in his or her relationship to Him, and yet we humans see each other as bottomless wells of creativity and uniqueness.
|
|
god-s-love
philosophy
philosophy-of-life
philosophy-of-religion
religion
|
Douglas Coupland |
|
f711471
|
First mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. Than mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers. Finally mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.
|
|
mountain
philosophy
river
|
Dan Millman |
|
9c7cb9f
|
"The conventional term is "mystical experience," meaning something that by its very nature lies beyond the reach of language, except for some vague verbal hand-wavings about "mystery" and "transcendence." As far as I was concerned - as a rationalist, an atheist, a scientist by training - this was the realm of gods and fairies and of no use to the great human project of trying to retain a foothold on the planet for future generations."
|
|
mysticism
philosophy
|
Barbara Ehrenreich |
|
995a912
|
Pjesnik ciji nas stihovi ushicuju mozda je bio tuzan usamljenik a glazbenik neki sjetan sanjar, ali i tada njegovo djelo dijeli vedrinu bogova i zvijezda. Ono sto nam umjetnik daje, to vise nije njegov mrak, njegova patnja ili tjeskoba, to je kaplja cisste svjetlosti, vjecite vedrine. Kad i cijeli narodi i jezici pokusavaju doprijeti do dubine svijeta, u mitovima, kozmologiji i raznim religijama, ono posljednje i najvise sto mogu dostici, to je ta vedrina. Sjecas li se starih Indijaca, nas je stari waldzellski ucitelj jednom o njima pricao: svijt patnje, razmisljanja, pokore, askeze; ali posljednja velika otkrica njegova duha bila su svijetla i vedra, vedar je smjesak onih koji su preboljeli svijet i smjesak Buddhe, vedri su likovi njegove dubokoumne mitologije.
|
|
inspirational
philosophy
|
Hermann Hesse |
|
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 |
|
b7712f3
|
Let's practice a little philosophy now; that is, let's shut up, lie on our stomachs, and think.
|
|
philosophy
|
Hermann Hesse |
|
c136d06
|
Why, then, does the man in love hang with complete abandon on the eyes of his chosen one, and is ready to make every sacrifice for her? Because it is his immortal part that longs for her; it is always the mortal part alone that longs for everything else. That eager and even ardent longing, directed to a particular woman, is therefore an immediate pledge of the indestructibility of the kernel of our true nature...
|
|
philosophy
|
Arthur Schopenhauer |
|
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 |
|
1dcdd83
|
She wasn't sure what she wanted to do, except that she knew that if she fooled around for long enough, without fretting, or nagging herself, she'd find out.
|
|
knowledge
life-lessons
mary-malone
philosophy
|
Philip Pullman |
|
18ba3be
|
So when the ruling ideology enjoins us to enjoy sex, not to feel guilty about it, since we are not bound by any prohibitions whose violations should make us feel guilty, the price we pay for this absence of guilt is anxiety.
|
|
nonfiction
philosophy
philosophy-of-life
psychology
theology
|
Slavoj Žižek |
|
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 |
|
5750431
|
To argue against abortion on the grounds that it prevents beings of high intrinsic value coming into the world is implicitly to condemn practices that reduce the future human population: contraception, whether by 'artificial' means or by 'natural' means such as abstinence on days when the woman is likely to be fertile, and also celibacy. This argument does not provide any reason for thinking abortion worse than any other means of population control. If the world is already overpopulated, the argument provides no reason at all against abortion.
|
|
ethics
morality
philosophy
|
Peter Singer |
|
a8cd439
|
Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.
|
|
perspective
philosophy
|
Rebecca Goldstein |
|
fa91c91
|
If we're only going to eat the prime cuts of young animals, we're going to have to raise & kill a great many more of them. And indeed, this has become the rule with disastrous results for both the animals & the land... If we are going to eat animals, it behooves us to waste as few and as little as we possibly can. Something that the humble cook-pot allows us to do.
|
|
ethics
food
philosophy
|
Michael Pollan |
|
1cd2c88
|
Some ideas are dangerous.
|
|
philosophy
thinking
women
|
Donna Woolfolk Cross |
|
b1d7de3
|
And if the earth Gods wreak vengeance on the sinless and the sinful alike, then this further destruction cannot be punishment for sins, but is in the way of all nature.
|
|
paganism
philosophy
|
Marion Zimmer Bradley |
|
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 |
|
4c0c4e3
|
No da se unishchozhi edna fabrika ili da se v'stane sreshchu edno pravitelstvo, ili da ne se popravi edin mototsiklet, zashchoto e sistema, oznachava da se atakuvat sledstviiata, a ne prichinite; i dokato borbata e sreshchu sledstviiata, nikakva promiana ne e v'zmozhna.
|
|
philosophy
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
8478231
|
We're living in topsy-turvy times, and I think that what causes the topsy-turvy feeling is inadequacy of old forms of thought to deal with new experiences. I've heard it said that the only real learning results from hang-ups, where instead of expanding the branches of what you already know, you have to stop and drift laterally for a while until you come across something that allows you to expand the roots of what you already know. Everyone's familiar with that. I think the same thing occurs with whole civilizations when expansion's needed at the roots.
|
|
evolution
expansion
philosophy
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
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 |
|
2e1859a
|
But the ones who go posing as moralists are the worst. Cost-free morals. Full of great ways for others to improve without any expense to themselves. There's an ego thing in there, too. They use the morals to make someone else look inferior and that way look better themselves. It doesn't matter what the moral code is -- religious morals, political morals, racist morals, capitalist morals, feminist morals, hippie morals -- they're all the same. The moral codes change but the meanness and the egotism stay the same.
|
|
philosophy
psychology
zen
|
Robert M. Pirsig |
|
fa66d2a
|
Science and philosophy have for centuries been sustained by unquestioning faith in perception. Perception opens a window on to things. This means that it is directed, quasi-teleologically, towards a *truth in itself* in which the reason underlying all appearances is to be found. The tacit thesis of perception is that at every instant experience can be co-ordinated with that of the previous instant and that of the following, and my perspective with that of other consciousnesses--that all contradictions can be removed, that monadic and intersubjective experience is one unbroken text--that what is now indeterminate for me could become determinate for a more complete knowledge, which is as it were realized in advance in the thing, or rather which is the thing itself. Science has first been merely the sequel or amplification of the process which constitutes perceived things. Just as the thing is the invariant of all sensory fields and of all individual perceptual fields, so the scientific concept is the means of fixing and objectifying phenomena. Science defined a theoretical state of bodies not subject to the action of any force, and *ipso facto* defined force, reconstituting with the aid of these ideal components the processes actually observed. It established statistically the chemical properties of pure bodies, deducing from these those of empirical bodies, and seeming thus to hold the plan of creation or in any case to have found a reason immanent in the world. The notion of geometrical space, indifferent to its contents, that of pure movement which does not by itself affect the properties of the object, provided phenomena with a setting of inert existence in which each event could be related to physical conditions responsible for the changes occurring, and therefore contributed to this freezing of being which appeared to be the task of physics. In thus developing the concept of the thing, scientific knowledge was not aware that it was working on a presupposition. Precisely because perception, in its vital implications and prior to any theoretical thought, is presented as perception of a being, it was not considered necessary for reflection to undertake a genealogy of being, and it was therefore confined to seeking the conditions which make being possible. Even if one took account of the transformations of determinant consciousness, even if it were conceded that the constitution of the object is never completed, there was nothing to add to what science said of it; the natural object remained an ideal unity for us and, in the famous words of Lachelier, a network of general properties. It was no use denying any ontological value to the principles of science and leaving them with only a methodical value, for this reservation made no essential change as far as philosophy was concerned, since the sole conceivable being remained defined by scientific method. The living body, under these circumstances, could not escape the determinations which alone made the object into an object and without which it would have had no place in the system of experience. The value predicates which the reflecting judgment confers upon it had to be sustained, in being, by a foundation of physico-chemical properties. In ordinary experience we find a fittingness and a meaningful relationship between the gesture, the smile and the tone of a speaker. But this reciprocal relationship of expression which presents the human body as the outward manifestation of a certain manner of being-in-the-world, had, for mechanistic physiology, to be resolved into a series of causal relations.
|
|
phenomenology
philosophy
|
Maurice Merleau-Ponty |
|
0ae3623
|
"As I listened to him describing the scene of the procurer seducing the young girl, I found myself torn between two conflicting emotions, between a powerful desire to laugh and an overwhelming surge of indignation. I was in agony. Again and again a roar of laughter prevented my rage bursting forth; again and again the rage rising in my heart became a roar of laughter. I was dumbfounded by such shrewdness and such depravity; by such soundness of ideas alternating with such falseness; by so general a perversity of feeling, so total a corruption, and so exceptional a candour. He saw how agitated I was. 'What's the matter?' he asked. ME: Nothing. HIM: I think you're upset. ME: Indeed I am. HIM: So what do you think I should do? ME: Talk about something else. What a wretched fate, to have been born and to have fallen so low! HIM: I agree. But don't let my state affect you too much. In opening my heart to you, it was not my intention to upset you. I've managed to save a little, while I was with those people. Remember I wanted for nothing, nothing whatsoever, and they also made me a small allowance for incidentals. [Here he began to strike himself on the forehead with his fist, bite his lips, and roll his eyes like a lunatic, then he said:] What's done is done. I've put a bit aside. Time's passed, so I'm that much to the good.
|
|
philosophy
scoundrel
|
Denis Diderot |
|
d14d6d6
|
"There appears to be a fifth way, that of eminence. According to this I argue that it is incompatible with the idea of a most perfect being that anything should excel it in perfection (from the corollary to the fourth conclusion of the third chapter) . Now there is nothing incompatible about a finite thing being excelled in perfection; therefore, etc. The minor is proved from this, that to be infinite is not incompatible with being; but the infinite is greater than any finite being. Another formulation of the same is this. That to which intensive infinity is not repugnant is not all perfect unless it be infinite, for if it is finite, it can be surpassed, since infinity is not repugnant to it. But infinity is not repugnant to being, therefore the most perfect being is infinite.
|
|
infinite
infinity
metaphysics
ontology
philosophy
theology
|
John Duns Scotus |
|
e1aa8fd
|
We thus have three levels of antagonism: the Two are never two, the One is never one, the Nothing is never nothing. Sinthome--the signifier of the barred Other--registers the antagonism of the Two, their non-relationship. The object a registers the antagonism of the One, its inability to be one. $ registers the antagonism of Nothing, its inability to be the Void at peace with itself, to annul all struggles. The position of Wisdom is that the Void brings ultimate peace, a state in which all differences are obliterated; the position of dialectical materialism is that there is no peace even in the Void.
|
|
lacan
philosophy
struggle
|
Slavoj Žižek |
|
02c2980
|
Jo knew nothing about philosophy or metaphysics of any sort, but a curious excitement, half pleasurable, half painful, came over her, as she listened with a sense of being turned adrift into time and space, like a young balloon out on a holiday.
|
|
philosophy
|
Louisa May Alcott |
|
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 |
|
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 |
|
0906c77
|
To explain our conventional ethical attitudes, is not to justify them.
|
|
morality
philosophy
|
Peter Singer |
|
8950121
|
"Bran said, "Why should some of the Riders of the Dark be dressed all in white and the rest all in black?" "Without colour...." Will said reflectively. "I don't know. Maybe because the Dark can only reach people at extremes-- blinded by their own shining ideas, or locked up in the darkness of their own heads."
|
|
inspirational
philosophy
susan-cooper
|
Susan Cooper |
|
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 |
|
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.
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images
philosophy
subconcious
terrorism
world-war-one
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Karl Ove Knausgaard |
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5039ad9
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Where have i=I read that at the end, when life, surface upon surface, has become completely encrusted with experience, you know everything, the secret, the power, and the glory, why you were born, why you are dying, and how it all could have been different? You are wise. But the greatest wisdom, at that moment, is knowing that your wisdom is too late. You understand everything when there is no longer anything to understand.
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life
philosophy
wisdom
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Umberto Eco |
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988eb60
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"Remember!" she called, as she followed him up the narrow ladders towards the bridge. "It is only a matter of scale and experience. You are not a fraction of the whole. You are a version of the whole! Time will seem to eddy and stall. This is scale. Everything is sentient, but scale alters perception. The time of a tree is not your time." It was as if she shouted to him all she had meant to teach him before this moment. "To the snail the foot which comes from nowhere and crushes him is as natural a disaster as a hurricane; it cannot be appealed to and is impossible to anticipate. The time of a star is not our time. Equity is the natural condition of the multiverse. There are things to fear in the colour fields, but not the fields themselves! Remember, Sam, we are God in miniature!"
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faith
god
life
philosophy
religion
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Michael Moorcock |
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1f602bf
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"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.
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greek
philosophy
poetry
translation
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Simonides of Ceos |
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822c82b
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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.
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philosophy
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Upton Sinclair |
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82b6345
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Ako s'dbata ne te razsmiva, ti prosto ne skhvashchash shegata.
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philosophy
quotes
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Gregory David Roberts |