Philosophy Quotes
If life in itself were a valuable possession and decidedly preferable to non-existence, the gate need not be occupied by such terrible guards as death and its terrors. But who would persevere in life as it is, if death were less frightful? And who could even so much as endure the thought of death, if life were a joy?
You couldn`t have strength without weakness, you couldn`t have light without dark, you couldn`t have love without loss.
If the omniscient author of nature knew that the study of his works tends to make men disbelieve his Being or Attributes, he would not have given them so many invitations to study and contemplate Nature.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.
The history of philosophy is in large measure the history of very smart people making very tempting mistakes, and if you don`t know the history, you are doomed to making the same darn mistakes all over again.
If determinism is true, the future is set - and this includes all our future states of mind and our subsequent behavior. And to the extent that the law of cause and effect is subject to indeterminism - quantum or otherwise - we can take no credit for what happens. There is no combination of these truths that seems compatible with the popular notion of free will.
A philosopher is someone who says, "We know it`s possible in practice; we`re trying to work out if it`s possible in principle!"
We cannot define anything precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other "You don't know what you are talking about!" The second one says "What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?", and so on.
The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.