Quotes by Philosophers - Page 164

Why do women use make-up? They know the world is a make-up
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Honestly speaking honesty can sometimes land you in hot waters
Bangambiki Habyarimana
In each generation, there is this certain wisdom of the ages that gets reburied in the fleeting drivels of modernity; then, like a diamond in the rough, it is yet again unearthed by a very small minority who not only restores it, but also polishes it and presents it as something new, something highly valuable and refreshing as understood by the current.
Criss Jami
Self-manipulation is our medication. Mythology is our drug. The only cure is honesty.
Stefan Molyneux
It is praiseworth to be open and honest, but you must be very discriminating on where and with whom you apply that most sacred virtue.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards...in order to appeal to the irrationality, dishonesty or stupidity of others.
Ayn Rand
Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected. But the one lied to almost never shares this view. The moment we consider our dishonesty from the point of view of those we lie to, we recognize that we would feel betrayed if the roles were reversed.
Sam Harris
...[F]rom me you shall hear the whole truth; not, I can assure you, gentlemen, in flowery language... decked out with fine words and phrases; no, what you will hear will be a straightforward speech in the first words that occur to me, confident as I am in the justice of my cause; and I do not want any of you to expect anything different.
Socrates
When a honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
Harry Frankfurt
I strongly object to wrong arguments on the right side. I think I object to them more than to the wrong arguments on the wrong side.
G.K. Chesterton
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
Henry David Thoreau
The prudent man is always sincere, and feels horror at the very thought of exposing himself to the disgrace which attends upon the detection of falsehood. But though always sincere, he is not always frank and open; and though he never tells any thing but the truth, he does not always think himself bound, when not properly called upon, to tell the whole truth. As he is cautious in his actions, so he is reserved in his speech; and never rashly or unnecessarily obtrudes his opinion concerning either things or persons.
Adam Smith
No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
John Stuart Mill
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.
Thomas Carlyle
Even if there are instances in which it can be mistook by onlookers, never fool yourself into using misunderstood genius as an excuse to be a fool.
Criss Jami
Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.
Marcus Aurelius
To be truly positive in the eyes of some, you have to risk appearing negative in the eyes of others.
Criss Jami
Being nice merely to be liked in return nullifies the point.
Criss Jami
Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?
Sam Harris
If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
But what is great can only begin great.
Martin Heidegger
A man must love a thing very much if he practices it without any hope of fame or money, but even practice it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it.
G.K. Chesterton
The real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
G.K. Chesterton
We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones -- those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing.
Susan Sontag
Some books sold because they are (said to be) great. Some are (said to be) great because they sold.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The great works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it, however great their worth otherwise.
Friedrich Nietzsche
He who loved himself became great in himself, and he who loved others became great through his devotion, but he who loved God became greater than all.
Søren Kierkegaard
Back then: to be regarded as well-known, one had to be great. Today: to be regarded as great, one has to be well-known.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary.
Adam Smith
He is, or has been, in many ways a great man. But for this very reason he is odd. It is only petty men who seem normal.
Umberto Eco
It takes two to make a very great career: the man who is great, and the man--almost rarer--who is great enough to see greatness and say so.
Ayn Rand
Great men of old and of today never considered themselves only human, they also considered themselves gods. And god! See what hat great achievement have they realized!
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Was the excellence of Socrates or of Shakespeare normal? Was it not rather abnormal, extraordinary? It is, I think, obvious in the first place, that not all that is good is normal; that, on the contrary, the abnormal is often better than the normal...
G.E. Moore
Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed, we can’t make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning—much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes (even) business sense.
Peter Koestenbaum
You want to be great? Help others achieve their greatness
Bangambiki Habyarimana
You are treading your path of greatness: now it must call up all your courage that there is no longer a path behind you!You are treading your path of greatness: no one shall steal after you here! Your foot itself has extinguished the path behind you, and above that path stands written: Impossibility.
Friedrich Nietzsche
PERFECT VIRTUE PRODUCES NOTHING, because it needs nothing. Production comes out of desire, production comes because you are imperfect. You create something as a substitute because you feel unfulfilled. When you are absolutely fulfilled, why should you create, how can you create? Then you yourself have become the glory of creation, then the inner being itself is so perfect, nothing is needed.PERFECT VIRTUE PRODUCES NOTHING. If the world is virtuous, all utilitarian goals will be lost. If the world is really virtuous there will be play and no production. Then the whole thing will just become a game. You enjoy it, but you don’t need it. A perfect sage is absolutely useless.
Osho
People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt... They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear
Ayn Rand
Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire...They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear.
Ayn Rand
Fame is a jealous mistressAnd will brook no rival.
Thiruvalluvar
The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.
Elbert Hubbard
I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don't mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
John Ruskin
Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This woman is beautiful and clever: but how much cleverer she would have become if she were not beautiful!
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is the reflection of my face. Often in these lost days I study it: I can understand nothing of this face. The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so. But it doesn't strike me. At heart, I am even shocked that anyone can attribute qualities of this kind to it, as if you called a clod of earth or a block of stone beautiful or ugly.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Have intercourse with females, acquire wealth.
John Stuart Mill
The most mesmerizing of artists is always like one who was merely drawing in the sand and people came to watch.
Criss Jami
What good is there in being blind, you ask? Well, maybe it's to see the beauty on the inside without being vainly distracted, or superficially blinded, by the ugly on the outside.
Criss Jami
You’re so beautiful, Dominique. Its such a lovely accident on God’s part that there’s one person who matches inside and out.
Ayn Rand
A beautiful lady with an evil heart is like a hundred dollar note cut in two with one piece missing
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Then as for those who gaze upon many beautiful things but don't see the beautiful itself, and aren't even capable of following someone else who leads them to it, and upon many just things but not the just itself, and all the things like that, we'll claim that they accept the seeming of everything but discern nothing of what they have opinions about.
Plato
One interesting thing is the idea that people have of a kind of science of Aesthetics. I would almost like to talk of what could be meant by Aesthetics.You might think Aesthetics is a science telling us what's beautiful - almost too ridiculous for words. I suppose it ought to include also what sort of coffee tastes well. I see roughly this - there is a realm of utterance of delight, when you taste pleasant food or smell a pleasant smell, etc., then there is a realm of Art which is quite different, though often you may make the same face when you hear a piece of music as when you taste good food. (Though you may cry at something you like very much.)Supposing you meet someone in the street and he tells you he has lost his greatest friend, in a voice extremely expressive of his emotion. You might say: 'It was extraordinarily beautiful, the way he expressed himself.' Supposing you then asked: 'What similarity has my admiring this person with my eating vanilla ice and like it?' To compare them seems almost disgusting. (But you can connect them by intermediate cases.) Suppose someone says 'But this is a quite different kind of delight.' But did you learn two meanings of 'delight'? You use the same word on both occasions. There is some connection between these delights. Although in the first case the emotion of delight would in our judgement hardly count.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
We are noble, good, beautiful, and happy!
Friedrich Nietzsche
The experience of this sweet life.
Dante Alighieri
Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt
Immanuel Kant