Philosophical Quotes - Page 48

No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed.

Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.

We ought not to believe those who today, adopting a philosophical air and with a tone of superiority, prophesy the decline of culter and are content with the unknowable in a self-satisfied way. For us there is no unknowable, and in my opinion there is also non whatsoever for the natural sciences. In place of this foolish unknowable, let our watchword on the contrary be: we must know - we shall know.

The past is past, and the future is yet to come. That means the future is in your hands - the future entirely depends on the present. That realization gives you a great responsibility.

Bernard Williams has been a distinctive presence on the intellectual scene for more than three decades. . . . His writings do not offer the dubious exhilaration of grand philosophical theory, in which messy reality is tamed and caged, but the thrill of seeing pretension punctured by a kind of high-voltage common sense (backed up by impressive erudition). . . . There is no one in philosophy quite like him.

The being who, for most men, is the source of the most lively, and even, be it said, to the shame of philosophical delights, the most lasting joys; the being towards or for whom all their efforts tend for whom and by whom fortunes are made and lost; for whom, but especially by whom, artists and poets compose their most delicate jewels; from whom flow the most enervating pleasures and the most enriching sufferings - woman, in a word, is not, for the artist in general... only the female of the human species. She is rather a divinity, a star.

A philosophical thought has probably not attained all its sharpness and all its illumination until it is expressed in French.

As so often happens in philosophy, clever people accept a false general principle on a priori grounds and then devote endless labour and ingenuity to explaining away plain facts which obviously conflict with it.

I don't like purely philosophical works. I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish." - Lara, from Doctor Zhivago

Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

The process of philosophizing, to my mind, consists mainly in passing from those obvious, vague, ambiguous things, that we feel quite sure of, to something precise, clear, definite, which by reflection and analysis we find is involved in the vague thing that we start from, and is, so to speak, the real truth of which that vague thing is a sort of shadow.

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

No kingdom has shed more blood than the kingdom of Christ.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.

It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

As a general rule, the longer a man's fame is likely to last, the later it will be in coming; for all excellent products require time for their development.

There is more to be learnt from every page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart, and Schleiermacher are taken together.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is.

Money is human happiness in the abstract.

Happiness lies in virtuous activity, and perfect happiness lies in the best activity, which is contemplative

I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view - I change it every month - and so I'll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.

Fine. Since the tea is not forthcoming, let's have a philosophical conversation.

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.