Quotes by Philosophers

To be is to do.
Immanuel Kant
It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning. They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke.
Søren Kierkegaard
The news is glorified gossip.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
Bertrand Russell
But the more shrewdly and earnestly we study the histories of men, the less ready shall we be to make use of the word ‘artificial.’ Nothing in the world has ever been artificial. Many customs, many dresses, many works of art are branded with artificiality because the exhibit vanity and self-consciousness: as if vanity were not a deep and elemental thing, like love and hate and the fear of death. Vanity may be found in darkling deserts, in the hermit and in the wild beasts that crawl around him. It may be good or evil, but assuredly it is not artificial: vanity is a voice out of the abyss.
G.K. Chesterton
It would be a great mistake to suppose that it is sufficient not to become personal yourself. For by showing a man quite quietly that he is wrong, and that what he says and thinks is incorrect — a process which occurs in every dialectical victory — you embitter him more than if you used some rude or insulting expression. Why is this? Because, as Hobbes observes, all mental pleasure consists in being able to compare oneself with others to one’s own advantage. — Nothing is of greater moment to a man than the gratification of his vanity, and no wound is more painful than that which is inflicted on it. Hence such phrases as “Death before dishonour,” and so on.
Arthur Schopenhauer
If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary’s right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem thecontrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.
Eric Hoffer
For as love is oftentimes won with beauty, so it is not kept, preserved, and continued, but by virtue and obedience.
Thomas More
I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.
Bertrand Russell
Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies and which human stupidity is keen to accept in payment
Michel de Montaigne
So might we ourselves look down into some rock-pool where lowly creatures repeat with naive zest dramas learned by their ancestors æons ago.
Olaf Stapledon
Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.
Blaise Pascal
Dear Whoever-that-just-found-out-that-they-have-a-terminal-illness, don't let that put you down. Technically, we are all dying.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Applicants for wisdomdo what I have done:inquire within
Heraclitus
History is for human self-knowledge…the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.
R.G. Collingwood
The greatest of empires, is the empire over one's self.
Publilius Syrus
We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge--and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves--how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?
Friedrich Nietzsche
There is an easy way to measure our inner levels of abjectness and friendliness to ourselves: we should examine how well we response to noise.
Alain de Botton
If I follow a particular method of knowing myself, then I shall have the result which that system necessitates; but the result will obviously not be the understanding of myself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The curve of man’s knowledge of himself ascends until the 17th century, declines gradually afterwards, in this century it finally plummets
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there is no disturbance within.
Seneca
I spent a long time in the study of the abstract sciences, and was disheartened by the small number of fellow-students in them. When I commenced the study of man, I saw that these abstract sciences are not suited to man, and that I was wandering further from my own state in examining them, than others in not knowing them. I pardoned their little knowledge; but I thought at least to find many companions in the study of man, and that it was the true study which is suited to him. I have been deceived; still fewer study it than geometry. It is only from want of knowing how to study this that we seek the other studies. But is it not that even here is not the knowledge which man should have, and that for the purposes of happiness it is better for him not to know himself?
Pascal
When we suspect that we are appropriate targets for hurt, it does not take much for us to believe that someone or something is out to hurt us
Alain de Botton
It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.
Francis Bacon
Men forget where the way leads and what they meet with every day seems strange to them.We should not act and speak like men asleep.
Heraclitus
Deep down within the heart there is a stillness which is healing, a trust in the universal laws which is unwavering, and a strength which is rock-like. But because it is so deep we need both patience and perseverance when digging for it.
Paul Brunton
What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.
Seneca
The one who says he doesn't understand anything about art, doesn't know himself.
Jostein Gaarder
To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.
Bruce Lee
One of the causes of unhappiness among intellectuals in the present day is that so many of them, especially those whose skill is literary, find no opportunity for the independent exercise of their talents, but have to hire themselves out to rich corporations directed by Philistines, who insist upon their producing what they themselves regard as pernicious nonsense. If you were to inquire among journalists in either England or America whether they believed in the policy of the newspaper for which they worked, you would find, I believe, that only a small minority do so; the rest, for the sake of a livelihood, prostitute their skill to purposes which they believe to be harmful. Such work cannot bring any real satisfaction, and in the course of reconciling himself to the doing of it, a man has to make himself so cynical that he can no longer derive whole-hearted satisfaction from anything whatever. I cannot condemn men who undertake work of this sort, since starvation is too serious an alternative, but I think that where it is possible to do work that is satisfactory to man’s constructive impulses without entirely starving, he will be well advised from the point of view of his own happiness if he chooses it in preference to work much more highly paid but not seeming to him worth doing on its own account. Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect.
Bertrand Russell
Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.
Ayn Rand
A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack
Ayn Rand
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, do you think ghosts will do it after?
Kabir
The accusation of metaphysics has become in philosophy something like the accusation of being a security risk in the public service. I do not for my part know what is meant by the word 'metaphysics'. The only definition I have found that fits all cases is: 'a philosophical opinion not held by the present author'.
Bertrand Russell
Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws.
P.D. Ouspensky
Man lives on earth not once, but three times: the first stage of his life is his continual sleep; the second, sleeping and waking by turns; the third, waking forever.
Gustav Fechner
...being aware that the sacred quality hidden in the experience of eroticism is something impossible for language to reach (this is also due to the impossibility of experiencing of re-experiencing anything through language), Bataille still expresses it in words. (Mishima on Bataille)
Georges Bataille
Historically mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of reality metaphysics is too “scientific”. Metaphysics is not reality. Metaphysics is names about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty-thousand-page menu and no food.
Robert M. Pirsig
To bracket form and finality out of one's investigations as far as reason allows is a matter of method, but to deny their reality altogether is a matter of metaphysics.
David Bentley Hart
It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Philosophically literate anthropomorphism is exactly what one would expect of any worldview which affirms that human beings are made in the image o
Eleanore Stump
In periods when shallow speculation is rife, one might think that metaphysics would shine forth, at least, by the brilliance of its modest reserve. But the very age that is unaware of the majesty of metaphysics, likewise overlooks its poverty. Its majesty? It is wisdom. Its poverty? It is human science.
Jacques Maritain
Heidegger is the philosopher to whom especially postmodernists chiefly appeal in their radical rejections of metaphysics and of any and every conception of the entirety of actuality, of Being as such and as a whole. To be sure, their appeals to Heidegger are as a rule extraordinarily superficial ones. These authors come nowhere near to providing adequate interpretations of or appropriations from Heid
Lorenz B. Puntel
The term 'Being' does not define that realm of entities which is uppermost when these are articulated conceptually according to genus and species: the 'universality' of Being 'transcends' any universality of genus.
Martin Heidegger
Can you really believe that a drop of urine is an infinity of monads, and that each of these has ideas, however obscure, of the universe as a whole?
Voltaire
And further, observing that all this indeterminate substance is in motion, and that no true predication can be made of that which changes, they supposed that it is impossible to make any true statement about that which is in all ways and entirely changeable. For it was from this supposition that there blossomed forth the most extreme view of those which we have mentioned, that of the professed followers of Heraclitus, and such as Cratylus held, who ended by thinking that one need not say anything, and only moved his finger; and who criticized Heraclitus for saying that one cannot enter the same river twice, for he himself held that it cannot be done even once.
Aristotle
In consequence of the inevitably scattered and fragmentary nature of our thinking, which has been mentioned, and of the mixing together of the most heterogeneous representations thus brought about and inherent even in the noblest human mind, we really possess only *half a consciousness*. With this we grope about in the labyrinth of our life and in the obscurity of our investigations; bright moments illuminate our path like flashes of lighting. But what is to be expected generally from heads of which even the wisest is every night the playground of the strangest and most senseless dreams, and has to take up its meditations again on emerging from these dreams? Obviously a consciousness subject to such great limitations is little fitted to explore and fathom the riddle of the world; and to beings of a higher order, whose intellect did not have time as its form, and whose thinking therefore had true completeness and unity, such an endeavor would necessarily appear strange and pitiable. In fact, it is a wonder that we are not completely confused by the extremely heterogeneous mixture of fragments of representations and of ideas of every kind which are constantly crossing one another in our heads, but that we are always able to find our way again, and to adapt and adjust everything. Obviously there must exist a simple thread on which everything is arranged side by side: but what is this? Memory alone is not enough, since it has essential limitations of which I shall shortly speak; moreover, it is extremely imperfect and treacherous. The *logical ego*, or even the *transcendental synthetic unity of apperception*, are expressions and explanations that will not readily serve to make the matter comprehensible; on the contrary, it will occur to many that“Your wards are deftly wrought, but drive no bolts asunder.”Kant’s proposition: “The *I think* must accompany all our representations ,” is insufficient; for the “I” is an unknown quantity, in other words, it is itself a mystery and a secret. What gives unity and sequence to consciousness, since by pervading all the representations of consciousness, it is its substratum, its permanent supporter, cannot itself be conditioned by consciousness, and therefore cannot be a representation. On the contrary, it must be the *prius* of consciousness, and the root of the tree of which consciousness is the fruit. This, I say, is the *will*; it alone is unalterable and absolutely identical, and has brought forth consciousness for its own ends. It is therefore the will that gives unity and holds all its representations and ideas together, accompanying them, as it were, like a continuous ground-bass. Without it the intellect would have no more unity of consciousness than has a mirror, in which now one thing now another presents itself in succession, or at most only as much as a convex mirror has, whose rays converge at an imaginary point behind its surface. But it is *the will* alone that is permanent and unchangeable in consciousness. It is the will that holds all ideas and representations together as means to its ends, tinges them with the colour of its character, its mood, and its interest, commands the attention, and holds the thread of motives in its hand. The influence of these motives ultimately puts into action memory and the association of ideas. Fundamentally it is the will that is spoken of whenever “I” occurs in a judgement. Therefore, the will is the true and ultimate point of unity of consciousness, and the bond of all its functions and acts. It does not, however, itself belong to the intellect, but is only its root, origin, and controller."—from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne in two volumes: volume II, pp. 139-140
Arthur Schopenhauer
And just as the same town, when looked at from different sides, appears quite different and is, as it were, multiplied in perspective, so also it happens that because of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were as many different universes, which are however but different perspective representations of a single universe form the different point of view of each monad.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
High towers, and metaphysically-great men resembling them, round both of which there is commonly much wind, are not for me. My place is the fruitful bathos, the bottom-land, of experience; and the word transcendental, does not signify something passing beyond all experience, but something that indeed precedes it a priori, but that is intended simply to make cognition of experience possible.
Immanuel Kant
It is true, no doubt, that this principle of the necessary unity of apperception is itself an identical and therefore an analytic proposition; but it shows, nevertheless, the necessity of a synthesis of the manifold given in an intuition, a synthesis without which it would be impossible to think the thoroughgoing identity of self-consciousness. For through the *I*, as a simple representation, nothing manifold is given; only in intuition, which is distinct from this representation, can a manifold be given, and then, through *combination*, be thought in one consciousness. An understanding in which through self-consciousness all the manifold would be given at the same time would be one that *intuits*; our understanding can do nothing but *think*, and must seek intuition in the senses. I am conscious, therefore, of the identical self with respect to the manifold of the representations that are given to me in an intuition, because I call them one and all *my* representations, as constituting *one* intuition. This means that I am conscious *a priori* of a necessary synthesis of them, which is called the original synthetic unity of apperception, and under which all representations given to me must stand, but under which they must also be brought by means of a synthesis.”—from_Critique of Pure Reason_. Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 128-129
Immanuel Kant
It must be *possible* for the *I think* to accompany all my representations: for otherwise something would be represented within me that could not be thought at all, in other words, the representation would either be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me. That representation which can be given prior to all thought is called *intuition*, and all the manifold of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the *I think* in the same subject in which this manifold of intuition is found. This representation (the *I think*), however, is an act of *spontaneity*, that is, it cannot be considered as belonging to sensibility. I call it *pure apperception*, in order to distinguish it from empirical apperception, as also from original apperception, because it is that self-consciousness which, by producing the representations, *I think* (which must be capable of accompanying all other representations, and which is one and the same in all consciousness), cannot itself be accompanied by any further representations. I also call the unity of apperception the *transcendental* unity of self-consciousness, in order to indicate that *a priori* knowledge can be obtained from it. For the manifold representations given in an intuition would not one and all be *my* representations, if they did not all belong to one self-consciousness. What I mean is that, as my representations (even though I am not conscious of them as that), they must conform to the condition under which alone they *can* stand together in one universal self-consciousness, because otherwise they would not one and all belong to me. From this original combination much can be inferred.The thoroughgoing identity of the apperception of a manifold that is given in intuition contains a synthesis of representations, and is possible only through the consciousness of this synthesis. For the empirical consciousness which accompanies different representations is itself dispersed and without reference to the identity of the subject. Such a reference comes about, not simply through my accompanying every representation with consciousness, but through my *adding* one representation to another and being conscious of the synthesis of them. Only because I am able to combine a manifold of given representations *in one consciousness* is it possible for me to represent to myself the *identity of the consciousness in these representations*, that is, only under the presupposition of some *synthetic* unity of apperception is the *analytic* unity of apperception possible. The thought that the representations given in intuition belong one and all *to me*, is therefore the same as the thought that I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least do so; and although that thought itself is not yet the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it nevertheless presupposes the possibility of this synthesis. In other words, it is only because I am able to comprehend the manifold of representations in one consciousness that I call them one and all *my* representations. For otherwise I should have as many-coloured and varied a self as I have representations of which I am conscious. Synthetic unity of the manifold of intuitions, as given *a priori*, is thus the ground of the identity of apperception itself, which precedes *a priori* all *my* determinate thought. Combination, however, does not lie in the objects, and cannot be borrowed from them by perception and thus first be taken into the understanding. It is, rather, solely an act of the understanding, which itself is nothing but the faculty of combining *a priori* and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apperception; and the principle of this unity is, in fact, the supreme principle of all human knowledge."—from_Critique of Pure Reason_. Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 124-128
Immanuel Kant
Ontically, of course, Dasein is not only close to us―even that which is closest: we *are* it, each of us, we ourselves. In spite of this, or rather for just this reason, it is ontologically that which is farthest. To be sure, its ownmost Being is such that it has an understanding of that Being, and already maintains itself in each case as if its Being has been interpreted in some manner. But we are certainly not saying that when Dasein's own Being is thus interpreted pre-ontologically in the way which lies closest, this interpretation can be taken over as an appropriate clue, as if this way of understanding Being is what must emerge when one's ownmost state of Being is considered as an ontological theme. The kind of Being which belongs to Dasein is rather such that, in understanding its own Being, it has a tendency to do so in terms of that entity towards which it comports itself proximally and in a way which is essentially constant―in terms of the 'world'. In Dasein itself, and therefore in its own understanding of Being, the way the world is understood is, as we shall show, reflected back ontologically upon the way in which Dasein itself gets interpreted.Thus because Dasein is ontico-ontologically prior, its own specific state of Being (if we understand this in the sense of Dasein's 'categorial structure') remains concealed from it. Dasein is ontically 'closest' to itself and ontologically farthest; but pre-ontologically it is surely not a stranger."―from_Being and Time_. Translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, pp. 36-37
Martin Heidegger
... It is possible to be a meta-physician without believing in a transcendent reality; for we shall see that many metaphysical utterances are due to the commission of logical errors, rather than to a conscious desire on the part of their authors to go beyond the limits of experience.
A.J. Ayer
Philosophy in its old form could exist only in the absence of engineering, but with engineering in existence and daily more active and far reaching, the old verbalistic philosophy and metaphysics have lost their reason to exist. They were no more able to understand the "production" of the universe and life than they are now able to understand or grapple with "production" as a means to provide a happier existence for humanity. They failed because their venerated method of "speculation" can not produce, and its place must be taken by mathematical thinking. Mathematical reasoning is displacing metaphysical reasoning. Engineering is driving verbalistic philosophy out of existence and humanity gains decidedly thereby. Only a few parasites and "speculators" will mourn the disappearance of their old companion "speculation." The world of producers -the predominating majority of human beings- will welcome a philosophy of ordered thought and production.
Alfred Korzybski
Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.
Aldous Huxley
At night I would climb the steps to the Sacre-Coeur, and I would watch Paris, that futile oasis, scintillating in the wilderness of space. I would weep, because it was so beautiful, and because it was so useless.
Simone de Beauvoir
As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I never rebel so much against France as not to regard Paris with a friendly eye; she has had my heart since my childhood.... I love her tenderly, even to her warts and her spots. I am French only by this great city: the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world.
Michel de Montaigne