Top 1200 Some Philosophical Quotes & Sayings - Page 17

I don't fear death. I'm not obsessed with it the way everybody else seems to be. It's wrong to say "everybody," but in literature I see it all the time - preoccupation with it, philosophical preoccupation, in fact. That's a principle element of literature and philosophy, often cited as the main element, the only real element. I say give it up.

I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful. I thought some of the stories were neat; I liked some of the liturgy and some of the songs.

Philosophical studies are beset by one peril, a person easily brings himself to think that he thinks; and a smattering of science encourages conceit. He is above his companions. A hieroglyphic is a spell. The gnostic dogma is cuneiform writing to the million. Moreover, the vain man is generally a doubter. It is Newton who sees himself in a child on the sea shore, and his discoveries in the colored shells.

One could say that what differentiates ancient from modern philosophy is the fact that, in ancient philosophy, it was not only Chrysippus or Epicurus who, just because they had developed a philosophical discourse, were considered philosophers. Rather, every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus was every bit as much a philosopher as they.

Freedom will destroy itself if it is not exercised within some sort of moral framework, some body of shared beliefs, some spiritual heritage transmitted through the Church, the family, and the school.

Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained--a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas.

To those who have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated, some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life.

The fundamental question for the United States is how it can cooperate to help meet the basic needs of the people of the hemisphere despite the philosophical disagreements it may have with the nature of particular regimes. It must seek pragmatic ways to help people without necessarily embracing their governments. It should recognize that diplomatic relations are merely practical conveniences and not measures of moral judgment.

Some magicians are rich, some are famous, some are stupidly good-looking.' Jamie gave Nick a rather complicated look. Nick raised an eyebrow. 'Some of us manage to be stupidly good-looking on our own.

The progress of science requires the growth of understanding in both directions, downward from the whole to the parts and upward from the parts to the whole. A reductionist philosophy, arbitrarily proclaiming that the growth of understanding must go only in one direction, makes no scientific sense. Indeed, dogmatic philosophical beliefs of any kind have no place in science.

The afternoon is bright, with spring in the air, a mild March afternoon, with the breath of April stirring, I am alone in the quiet patio looking for some old untried illusion - some shadow on the whiteness of the wall some memory asleep on the stone rim of the fountain, perhaps in the air the light swish of some trailing gown.

That there should be some fire even after this life is not incredible, and it can be inquired into and either be discovered or left hidden whether some of the faithful may be saved, some more slowly and some more quickly in the greater or lesser degree in which they loved the good things that perish, through a certain purgatorial fire.

There are some movies that you feel like doing because of the script. Some because it sounds like fun, some because that's the director you want to work with, some because it's a project that you want to be involved with, and some because you will be paid lots of money. But the bottom line is I must feel like doing it.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren't as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

By my physical constitution I am but an ordinary man ... Yet some great events, some cutting expressions, some mean hypocracies, have at times thrown this assemblage of sloth, sleep, and littleness into rage like a lion.

Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature. But it is not science alone that has guided me. I have also been helped by a renewed study of the classical philosophical arguments.

...My friend, there are some things that I cannot tell you. Some I will tell you in time; some, others will tell you; some you may never know, or you may be the first to find the answers.

It started becoming clear to me how one might have views about the nature of mind and of knowledge which are empirically informed. This way of thinking about philosophical theorizing makes sense of how philosophy might be a legitimate intellectual activity, in a way that a good deal of the armchair philosophy, I believe, cannot.

Some consider themselves great because they have vast territory, some because they have finance, some because they have arms, some because they have vast populations, but, the real wealth, real greatnesss is virtue which earns the Grace of God.

An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense.

If we look at it more from a philosophical standpoint, these foundations of atheism and secular humanism believe that you are your own God. That leads us to something that unfortunately has crept into many churches across America, and it is what I call the Social Gospel. The social gospel, that could creep into something that is called Liberation Theology, which is a mixture of leftist, pseudo-Christianity with Marxism.

Musicians get tense at big gigs. Some you can't talk to before the concert; some you can't talk to afterwards; some need the same size dressing rooms as others; others need bigger; some have comments to make on others' musicianship or how a particular song ought to be played.

We call 'Slavery is wrong' a moral truth because there is a specific history of theoretical investigation of a particular kind of slavery. We discussed it for centuries in metaphysical, economic, biological, and philosophical terms; we listened to all the arguments pro and con, we read all the testimonies of slaves and witnesses, and we decided. Though this 'we" is not everybody on earth, or even most people, who've never thought about slavery much.

Some games you win, some you lose, and some you draw.

Why do you tell me... so much?" Luthe considered her. "I tell you... some you need to know, and some you have earned the right to know, and some it won't hurt you to know--" He stopped.... "Some things I tell you only because I wish to tell them to you.

We all, to some degree, wish we could have some element of our childhood back again while, for kids, moving on is something they're worried about. They know it's going to happen at some point.

If everybody is rewarded just for being alive, you get the same sort of effect as you do when you reward every student just for being enrolled. You destroy not only education, you destroy society by giving A's to everyone. This is a philosophical consideration that bothers me very much as I sit in the United States Senate and see the great budget allocations going through.

I would describe myself as a writer and a student of media. If there's a central idea in media theory, it's to take media as form. It might grow out of philosophical aesthetics or the study of literature and visual art, but the various strands of media theory converge in treating all of those as subsets of the study of media as form.

I have a real kind of fundamental philosophical belief that movies are better if everyone gets paid when they work, and if they don't work, the people who worked on them make a little bit of money, and the people who finance them, they lose, but they don't lose too much. I believe that that creates better work.

Part of my methodological approach is made explicit when I discuss ways in which literature can have philosophical significance. Literature doesn't typically argue - and when it does, it's deadly dull. But literature can supply the frame within which we come to observe and reason, or it can change our frame in highly significant ways. That's one of the achievements I'd claim for Mann, and for Death in Venice.

I try to tweet, but I still haven't gotten into the rhythm as much as some people who have, like, 20,000 tweets. There are some great comedians on there, so you get some pretty funny hot takes and bits.

Affluence separates people. Poverty knits 'em together. You got some sugar and I don't; I borrow some of yours. Next month you might not have any flour; well, I'll give you some of mine.

We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and the human well-being - a conversation in which we avail ourselves of all scientific insights and philosophical arguments that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse - or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.

Some period pieces are shot slightly objectively, a little bit, and some call it stuffy or dusty or old fashioned. I always felt that some of the films that I admire the most are the ones where they're intimate with the characters.

He knew one thing for sure, though. Whatever happened, Matt would have some handy excuse. He'd make up some story or change an old one, find some dumb quote to explain it all.

Beyond its practical aspects, gardening - be it of the soil or soul - can lead us on a philosophical and spiritual exploration that is nothing less than a journey into the depths of our own sacredness and the sacredness of all beings. After all, there must be something more mystical beyond the garden gate, something that satisfies the soul's attraction to beauty, peace, solace, and celebration.

[Phil wood] put on some [Igor] Stravinsky and say to follow the score, tell me to play me the opening to the Rite of Spring. Or, "I'm going to play you some 20th century obscure classical composer you don't know". Or, "Let's listen to some Charles Ives, let's sight read some Bartok violin duets", etc.

This prophecy of a coming enlightenment is echoed in virtually every faith and philosophical tradition on Earth. Hindus call it the Krita Age, astrologers call it the Age of Aquarius, the Jews describe the coming of the Messiah, theosophists call it the New Age, cosmologists call it Harmonic Convergence and predict the actual date of December 21, 2012.

Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.

From a philosophical perspective, I want to fight off isolationism and protectionism, be it part of another voice out there that says, wait a minute, what matters to women in Afghanistan matters to America. An isolationist point of view says it doesn't matter. The articulation of "all life matters" helps frame the case that it does matter what happens to a woman in Afghanistan.

There's this idea of America that some people have to win and some have to lose, so certain things are in place to make this happen. Some people have to be the next legislators and political elites, and some have to fill the prisons and work in McDonald's. That's how America works. It's a machine which needs people up top and people down low.

Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. When I say, therefore, that they must be treated as rational creatures, I mean that you must make them sensible, by the mildness of your carriage, and in the composure even in the correction of them, that what you do is reasonable in you, and useful and necessary for them; and that it is not out of caprichio, passion or fancy, that you command or forbid them any thing.

Certain issues in philosophy of science (having to do with observation and the definition of a theory's empirical import) had beenmisconstrued as issues in philosophy of logic and of language. With respect to modality, I hold the exact opposite: important philosophical problems concerning language have been misconstrued as relating to the content of science and the nature of the world. This is not at all new, but is the traditional nominalist line.

Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.

Music is an emotion and it makes you feel a certain way. Some songs make you want to dance, while some make you think. Some songs are positive, while some people see those songs as negative.

Everyone crashes Some get back on Some don't Some can't.

I persist in preferring philosophers to rabbis priests imams ayatollahs and mullahs. Rather than trust their theological hocus-pocus I prefer to draw on alternatives to the dominant philosophical historiography: the laughers materialists radicals cynics hedonists atheists sensualists voluptuaries. They know that there is only one world and that promotion of an afterlife deprives us of the enjoyment and benefit of the only one there is. A genuinely deadly sin.

Teenagers watch and listen to all kinds of things. It is the nature of being a teenager to seek out intense stuff. Stuff about death and sex and love and fear. Teenagers are the bravest, most curious, most philosophical, most open-minded readers there are, which is why so many less-than-young adults like writing for them.

Some people are motivated by a need for recognition, some by money, and some by a broad social goal. I start from a different place: from the love of ideas and the urge to put them into motion and see where they might lead.

Some males are intelligent, some are dumb. Some females are intelligent, some are dumb. We're all human beings, no one is superior.

I know my ticket is vulnerability. Most people point to some emotional experience, some hardship, some high or low when they talk about my music... a time when they need to feel those feelings more.

The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. And this is by no means so difficult a task as the history of philosophy would lead one to suppose. For if there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery.

It strikes me that mathematical writing is similar to using a language. To be understood you have to follow some grammatical rules. However, in our case, nobody has taken the trouble of writing down the grammar; we get it as a baby does from parents, by imitation of others. Some mathematicians have a good ear; some not (and some prefer the slangy expressions such as 'iff'). That's life.

You play a team for the second time, you definitely have some familiarity. I think it's beneficial for your players that they have some tape to look at of the opponent and can focus on the individual matchups that they have some current history to draw from.

The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community - these are the most vital things that education must try to produce.

Licences to have babies incidentally is something that I got in trouble for some years ago for suggesting even in Canada that this might be necessary at some point, at least some restriction on the right to have a child.

As a philosophical problem, it comes down to a better way to engage with the passage of time; and I think we're getting close to one, because the imaginative loss of the future is becoming acute.The most effective political actors on the planet now are people who want to blow themselves up.These are people who really don't want to get out of the bed in the morning and face another unpredictable day.

We have all had the experience at some point in our lives of sitting across from someone whose favorite subject is themselves. This is true of nearly everyone to some respect - but for some people, it is a particularly acute problem.

Every time I go to Athens, it's not just a trip down memory lane; there's some surprise. I always meet somebody new, or some crazy party happens, or there's some amazing event.

One of the advantages of getting elected governor when you're 58 instead of 38 is you have some mileage on you and part of that means some history and some relationships with people who have spent a fair amount of their career in the public and in the private sector.