Quotes by Philosophers - Page 123

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
Henry David Thoreau
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
Immanuel Kant
An enlightened thinker does not waste his precious time thinking about what others think of what he thinks.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Actual freedom has not increased in proportion to man's awareness of it.
Albert Camus
[To think for oneself] is the maxim of a reason never passive. The tendency to such passivity, and therefore to heteronomy of reason, is called prejudice; and the greatest prejudice of all is to represent nature as not subject to the rules that the understanding places at its basis by means of its own essential law, i.e. is superstition. Deliverance from superstition is called enlightenment; because although this name belongs to deliverance from prejudices in general, yet superstition especially (in sensu eminenti) deserves to be called a prejudice. For the blindness in which superstition places us, which it even imposes on us as an obligation, makes the need of being guided by others, and the consequent passive state of our reason, peculiarly noticeable.
Immanuel Kant
Via the mediation of the Enlightenment, this movement had changed from a hobby among a tiny literate elite and their secretaries, an ostentatious amusement among princely and mercantile art patrons and their masterly suppliers (who established a first 'art system'), into a national, a European, indeed a planetary matter. In order to spread from the few to the many, the renaissance had to discard its humanistic exterior and reveal itself as the return of ancient mass culture. The true renaissance question, reformulated in the terminology of practical philosophy - namely, whether other forms of life are possible and permissible for us alongside and after Christianity, especially ones whose patterns are derived from Greek and Roman (perhaps even Egyptian or Indian) antiquity - was no longer a secret discourse or an academic exercise in the nineteenth century, but rather an epochal passion, an inescapable pro nobis.
Peter Sloterdijk
If Enlightenment in a technical sense is the programmatic word for progress in the awareness of explicitness, one can say without fear of grand formulas that rendering the implicit explicit is the cognitive form of fate. Were this not the case, one would never have had cause to believe that later knowledge would necessarily be better knowledge - for, as we know, everything that has been termed 'research' in the last centuries has rested on this assumption. Only when the inward-folded 'things' or facts are by their nature subject to a tendency to unfold themselves and become more comprehensible for us can one - provided the unfolding succeeds - speak of a true increase in knowledge. Only if the 'matters' are spontaneously prepared (or can be forced by imposed examination) to come to light in magnified and better-illuminated areas can one seriously - which here means with ontological emphasis - state that there is science in progress, there are real knowledge gains, there are expeditions in which we, the epistemically committed collective, advance to hidden continents of knowledge by making thematic what was previously unthematic, bringing to light what is yet unknown, and transforming vague cognizance into definite knowledge. In this manner we increase the cognitive capital of our society - the latter word without quotation marks in this case.
Peter Sloterdijk
Man, when he is re-born, passes through the ages as he who is born; and the preceding state is always as an egg in respect to the subsequent one, thus he is continually conceived and born: and this not only when he lives in the world, but also when he comes into another life to eternity: and still when he cannot be further perfected, then to be as an egg to those things which remain to be manifested, which are indefinite.
Emanuel Swedenborg
I became aware that there was no barrier between what was inside and what was outside. My body was illuminated by a bright light. I heard with my eyes and saw with my ears. I used my nose as mouth and my mouth as nose. I experienced the world with the totality of my senses as my spirit gathered and my form dissolved. There was no distinction between muscles and bones. My body stopped being heavy and I felt like a floating leaf. Without knowing it, I was being carried by the wind. Drifting here and there, I did not know whether I rode on the wind or the wind rode on me.
Liezi
A man like this will not go where he has no will to go, will not do what he has no mind to do. Though the world might praise him and say he had really found something, he would look unconcerned and never turn his head; though the world might condemn him and say he had lost something, he would look serene and pay no heed. The praise and blame of the world are no loss or gain to him.
Zhuangzi
The main point of enlightenment is man's release from his self-caused immaturity, primarily in matters of religion.
Immanuel Kant
Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.
Mortimer J. Adler
She shook her head. "It sounds suspiciously like Nirvana." "What's wrong with that?" "Pure Spirit, one hundred percent proof—that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work." "This is better," Will insisted. "You mean, it's more delicious. That's why it's such an enormous temptation. The only temptation that God could succumb to. The fruit of the ignorance of good and evil. What heavenly lusciousness, what a supermango! God had been stuffing Himself with it for billions of years. Then all of a sudden, up comes Homo sapiens, out pops the knowledge of good and evil. God had to switch to a much less palatable brand of fruit. You've just eaten a slice of the original supermango, so you can sympathize with Him." A chair creaked, there was a rustle of skirts, then a series of small busy sounds that he was unable to interpret. What was she doing? He could have answered that question by simply opening his eyes. But who cared, after all, what she might be doing? Nothing was of any importance except this blazing uprush of bliss and understanding. "Supermango to fruit of knowledge — I'm going to wean you," she said, "by easy stages.
Aldous Huxley
With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss; To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and shipwrecked ones!By diverse ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness. And unwillingly only did I ask my way - that was always counter to my taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves. A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling: and verily, one must also learn to answer such questioning! That, however - is my taste: Neither a good nor a bad taste, but my taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy."This is now my way - where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way." For "the way" - it doth not exist!
Friedrich Nietzsche
Ruthlessly, in despite of itself, the Enlightenment has extinguished any trace of its own self-consciousness. The only kind of thinking that is sufficiently hard to shatter myths is ultimately self-destructive.
Theodor W. Adorno
The path of Tao is not that of sudden enlightenment. It is not like Zen. Zen is sudden enlightenment, Tao is gradual growth.
Osho
A buddha lives in the orgasmic state for twenty-four hours, day in and day out. Between the day Gautama Buddha became enlightened and the day he died there is a distance of forty-two years. For these forty-two years he was utterly in an orgasmic state. Just think! Those few moments you have are nothing compared to a Buddha’s.
Osho
If one comes to fundamentals then this is the most fundamental thing: the moment you are not, enlightenment is. With emptiness, the matter is settled.
Osho
The Enlightenment, finally, invented progressive 'history' as an inner-worldly purgatory in order to develop the conditions of possibility of a perfected 'society'. This provided the required setting for the aggressive social theology of the Modern Age to drive out the political theology of the imperial eras. What was the Enlightenment in its deep structure if not an attempt to translate the ancient rhyme on learning and suffering - mathein pathein - into a collective and species-wide phenomenon? Was its aim not to persuade the many to expose themselves to transitional ordeals that would precede the great optimization of all things?
Peter Sloterdijk
If the conscious falls into the unconscious you fall into a coma, and if the unconscious falls into the conscious and becomes conscious itself, you become enlightened, you become a Buddha, a Sosan.
Osho
These ideas grew out of the Enlightenment; their roots are in Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality, Humboldt’s Limits of State Action, Kant’s insistence, in his defense of the French Revolution, that freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved. With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order. In fact, on the very same assumptions that led classical liberalism to oppose the intervention of the state in social life, capitalist social relations are also intolerable.
Noam Chomsky
Once you have known awareness, nothing is worth it-- you have known the greatest bliss of life. Then, suddenly, many things simply drop; they become stupid,become foolish. The motivation is not there,the desire is not there, the dreams have fallen.
Osho
When the ego is not, you are for the first time encountering your being. That being is void. Then you can surrender; then you have surrendered.
Osho
I am not my mind, because I can observe my thoughts. So the observer is different from the observed – I am not my mind.” he found that there is no atman, no soul, because this atma is nothing but your mental information – just doctrines, words, philosophies.
Osho
Knowing it, you know the very heartbeat of existence. Knowing it, you have known all that is worth knowing, and you have achieved all that is worth achieving. It opens doors to all the mysteries of existence, to all the treasures of existence which belong to you. Outside you are simply a beggar. Even your greatest intellectuals are just playing with words.
Osho
You only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics,you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Hence there is no free admission to the process of enlightenment - it is always paid at a psycho-traumatic cost. Only such individuals as always already bring along much more injury than could be caused by mere cognitive attacks on their narcissistic system have an apparently free backstage pass to it. Such candidates, like the highly talented of a special type, obtain their degree in wound studies free of charge. For them psychical sacrifices that only affect the cognitive immunity-shield appear to be forms of relief - for which reason they move about in the region of obscure theory like fish in water.
Peter Sloterdijk
How can I know these trees, how can I know you, how can I know the other if I myself am unknown to me, if I am myself ignorant; when I do not know who I am.
Osho
Half your life is spent in thinking of the past and the other half in thinking about the future. The journey never begins. Either you roam around the byways of your memory, which is a dead dream, or you wander in your imagination which is a dream of the future, which is still to come. You are divided in these two. The present is in the middle, and that is where life is – but you miss it!
Osho
Tapascharya, spiritual practice means: accepting the truth that you are alone; that there is no way one can have a friend, a companion. No matter how much you long for it, regardless of how much you close your eyes and dream of them – you will still remain alone. For lives you built a home, you built a family, and then you lost it – and all through that you have always remained alone. Not even slightly has your aloneness been ever affected. So one who has known, one who has accepted that he is alone, for him there is an indication in this sutra: CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE BEING. Only being is yours, nothing else.
Osho
Shiva is saying: the body is a product of nature and your will to do. The nature is merely the source, the womb. Your ego functions like a seed in it. Your will to do this or that, to achieve this or that, to become this or that – acts like a seed. And the moment the art of your doing meets the womb of nature, a body is formed.Therefore, buddhas say: ”Give up all desires, only then will you be liberated.: If you desired for heaven, you will become an angel, but that won’t be liberation either. Because as long as desires persist, there can never be any liberation. All desires lead to the formation of bodies.
Osho
Knowing others is Wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment
Lao Tzu
Enlightenment will be now the beginning, not the end. Beginning of a non-ending process in all dimensions of richness.
Osho
Sleeping is the most common attempt to temporarily escape reality.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Life is merely one very long day that routinely gets dark to give people a sensible excuse to keep their eyes closed for 8 hours.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Sleep's what we need. It produces an emptiness in us into which sooner or later energies flow.
John Cage
His life was focused on each single day. For him each night meant a void, a grave, extinction. The capacity to lay oneself down to die at the end of every day, without thinking anything of it, was something he had not yet acquired.
Robert Musil
Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death. The higher the interest rate and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed
Arthur Schopenhauer
There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.
Thomas Paine
In practice it is death that works soseductively behind the image of its brother, sleep
Friedrich Nietzsche
With regard to sleep and waking, we must consider what they are: whether they are peculiar to soul or to body, or common to both; and if common, to what part of soul or body the appertain: further, from what cause it arises that they are atributes of animals, and whether all animals share in them both, or some partake of the one only, others of the other only, or some partake of neither and some of both.
Aristotle
I feel like I'm sleeping when I'm awake, and really living when I'm asleep.
Michael J. White
Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.
Albert Camus
Daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh; the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time.
Umberto Eco
If your ears are bigger than your mouth, you will go very far in life.
Matshona Dhliwayo
When I was young, I admired old people.Now that I’m old, I admire wise people.When I was a youth, I admired strong people.Now that I’m old, I admire meek people.When I was an adult, I admired wealthy people.Now that I’m old, I admire happy people.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Use your talents.Do your best.Achieve your goals.Fulfill your purpose.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Be humble to those who praise you.Be pleasant to those who honor you.Be kind to those who cherish you.Be good to those who love you.Be generous to those who adore you.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Be smarter than others imagined.Be braver than others anticipated.Be stronger than others calculated.Be better than others envisioned.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Smile, even when others do not.Care, even when others will not.Love, even when others could not.Give, even when others cannot.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If something makes you wealthier,it is of considerable importance.If something makes you happier,it is of substantial importance.If something makes you better,it is of monumental importance.If something makes you wiser,it is of astronomical importance.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Be a teacher.Be a healer.Be a giver.Be a winner.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Be truthful.Be presentable.Be tactical.Be profitable.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Be knowledgeable.Be logical.Be affable.Be trustable.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Life is too short to listen to fools, and too important to ignore the wise.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Be slow to teach, and quick to learn.
Matshona Dhliwayo
A kiss a day keeps your wife's wrath away.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Looking for a wife is like fishing; before you go, make sure you don't have a hole in your net.
Matshona Dhliwayo
A flawed rose is better than a flawless dandy lion.
Matshona Dhliwayo