Quotes by Philosophers - Page 242

I believe in fatalism, the positive one.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Stop searching for god in the farthest corners of the universe. He is in you. You are it
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Everything in the world is potentially yours. Don't limit yourself to your own means
Bangambiki Habyarimana
If success is a miracle then you must be the miracle worker
Bangambiki Habyarimana
When you start doing the impossible, you make it possible
Bangambiki Habyarimana
When you believe it, you've created it, whatever it is
Bangambiki Habyarimana
A hero: a man or woman who is unsatisfied by his condition, and resolves to do something about it.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Keep running; keep dreaming, keep alive the flame of hope; defeat and despair will not catch up with you
Bangambiki Habyarimana
The reason you don't succeed in life is because you are too lenient with your deadly enemies. Identify them and eradicate them completely, don't let any of their seed escape your vengeful sword. Don't negotiate with the enemy and never make deals with them. Only after you have wiped them out of the map will success smile at you
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Don't be afraid to bite on a giant, learn from the mosquito
Bangambiki Habyarimana
State what you want, and go for it, don't refuse yourself a request you did not make.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
An entrepreneur is not deterred by his lack of perfection, he knows no one else is
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Every time someone starts a project he is considered nuts, until he beats all the odds and laughs the last.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Believe that fate is smiling to you and everything you touch will turn into gold
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Self-fulfilling prophecy always come to pass
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Nothing closes doors as quickly as constant bad humor, reclamation, whining. Nobody wants to associate themselves with losers.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.
Alain de Botton
We are to blame if reality does not take the form we desire. Whatever we have not desired with sufficient strength, that we call nonexistent. Desire it, imbrue it with your blood, your sweat, your tears, and it will take on a body. Reality is nothing more than the chimera subjected to our desire and our suffering.
Nikos Kazantzakis
From this we conclude, that, to live in harmony and peace…we must trace a line of distinction between those (assertions) that are capable of verification, and those that are not; (we must) separate by an inviolable barrier the world of fantastical beings from the world of realities.
Constantin-François Volney
The world ultimately is what we say it is.
David Friedrich Strauss
You're 82 years old. You've shrunk six centimetres, you only weigh 45 kilos yet you're still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We've lived together now for 58 years and I love you more than ever. I once more feel a gnawing emptiness in the hollow of my chest that is only filled when your body is pressed next to mine.
André Gorz
It doubtless seems highly paradoxical to assert that Time is unreal, and that all statements which involve its reality are erroneous. Such an assertion involves a far greater departure from the natural position of mankind than is involved in the assertion of the unreality of Space or of the unreality of Matter. So decisive a breach with that natural position is not to be lightly accepted. And yet in all ages the belief in the unreality of time has proved singularly attractive.
J.M.E. McTaggart
...the real is coherent and probable because it is real, not real because it is coherent...
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
the real is coherent and probable because it is real, and not real because it is coherent...
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
The supreme truth is that nothing ever is born.
Gaudapada
However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for.
Aldous Huxley
The difficulties connected with my criterion of demarcation (D) are important, but must not be exaggerated. It is vague, since it is a methodological rule, and since the demarcation between science and nonscience is vague. But it is more than sharp enough to make a distinction between many physical theories on the one hand, and metaphysical theories, such as psychoanalysis, or Marxism (in its present form), on the other. This is, of course, one of my main theses; and nobody who has not understood it can be said to have understood my theory.The situation with Marxism is, incidentally, very different from that with psychoanalysis. Marxism was once a scientific theory: it predicted that capitalism would lead to increasing misery and, through a more or less mild revolution, to socialism; it predicted that this would happen first in the technically highest developed countries; and it predicted that the technical evolution of the 'means of production' would lead to social, political, and ideological developments, rather than the other way round.But the (so-called) socialist revolution came first in one of the technically backward countries. And instead of the means of production producing a new ideology, it was Lenin's and Stalin's ideology that Russia must push forward with its industrialization ('Socialism is dictatorship of the proletariat plus electrification') which promoted the new development of the means of production.Thus one might say that Marxism was once a science, but one which was refuted by some of the facts which happened to clash with its predictions (I have here mentioned just a few of these facts).However, Marxism is no longer a science; for it broke the methodological rule that we must accept falsification, and it immunized itself against the most blatant refutations of its predictions. Ever since then, it can be described only as nonscience—as a metaphysical dream, if you like, married to a cruel reality.Psychoanalysis is a very different case. It is an interesting psychological metaphysics (and no doubt there is some truth in it, as there is so often in metaphysical ideas), but it never was a science. There may be lots of people who are Freudian or Adlerian cases: Freud himself was clearly a Freudian case, and Adler an Adlerian case. But what prevents their theories from being scientific in the sense here described is, very simply, that they do not exclude any physically possible human behaviour. Whatever anybody may do is, in principle, explicable in Freudian or Adlerian terms. (Adler's break with Freud was more Adlerian than Freudian, but Freud never looked on it as a refutation of his theory.)The point is very clear. Neither Freud nor Adler excludes any particular person's acting in any particular way, whatever the outward circumstances. Whether a man sacrificed his life to rescue a drowning, child (a case of sublimation) or whether he murdered the child by drowning him (a case of repression) could not possibly be predicted or excluded by Freud's theory; the theory was compatible with everything that could happen—even without any special immunization treatment.Thus while Marxism became non-scientific by its adoption of an immunizing strategy, psychoanalysis was immune to start with, and remained so. In contrast, most physical theories are pretty free of immunizing tactics and highly falsifiable to start with. As a rule, they exclude an infinity of conceivable possibilities.
Karl R. Popper
...reality is a system, completely ordered and fully intelligible, with which thought in its advance is more and more identifying itself. We may look at the growth of knowledge … as an attempt by our mind to return to union with things as they are in their ordered wholeness…. and if we take this view, our notion of truth is marked out for us. Truth is the approximation of thought to reality … Its measure is the distance thought has travelled … toward that intelligible system … The degree of truth of a particular proposition is to be judged in the first instance by its coherence with experience as a whole, ultimately by its coherence with that further whole, all comprehensive and fully articulated, in which thought can come to rest.
Brand Blanshard
...that in former ages they had been as wise as they are in this present, nay, wiser; for, said they, many in this age do think their forefathers have been fools, by which they prove themselves to be such.
Margaret Cavendish
...that much gold, and great store of riches makes them mad, insomuch as they endeavour to destroy each other...
Margaret Cavendish
There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it positively refuses to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
William James
Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to his society.
Aldous Huxley
There is no doubt that Einstein's pipe was his closest associate, while others--including wife and family--were never permitted the illusion that they would ever be at the center of his life.
Palle Yourgrau
...it would be a very naive sort of dogmatism to assume that there exists an absolute reality of things which is the same for all living beings. Reality is not a unique and homogeneous thing; it is immensely diversified, having as many different schemes and patterns as there are different organisms. Every organism is, so to speak, a monadic being. It has a world of its own because it has an experience of its own. The phenomena that we find in the life of a certain biological species are not transferable to any other species. The experiences - and therefore the realities - of two different organisms are incommensurable with one another. In the world of a fly, says Uexkull, we find only "fly things"; in the world of a sea urchin we find only "sea urchin things.
Ernst Cassirer
What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awake, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Don't be too realistic , It will make you an Idiot .
Unknown Phylosopher
Most people, if philosophy touches them, they shatter, they atomize, they turn to dust. It is win/lose between philosophy and delusion, and most people are almost entirely composed of delusion. They're only allowed as much reality as serves the masters. But they're not allowed any reality which disturbs their masters...
Stefan Molyneux
P60- one does not liberate people by alienating them. P62- consciousness is the constant unveiling of reality.
Paulo Freire
Facts do not fall in the face of discomfort.
Stefan Molyneux
It's all talk til it's all real walk.
T.F. Hodge
Nothing we do makes us real. That which is real makes us do.
T.F. Hodge
Even in expecting, one leaps away from the possible and gets a footing in the real. It is for its reality that what is expected is expected. By the very nature of expecting, the possible is drawn into the real, arising from it and returning to it.
Martin Heidegger
You maintain hope for humanity as an infinite skeptic of gossip and slander. In all mankind's desires for entertainment and exaggeration and sensationalism, when it comes to gossip, the individual always sounds worse than he really is. This is why adhering to gossip subtly affects the mental state of the listener - he goes on holding shady opinions regardless of where the realities of their lights and darknesses may stand.
Criss Jami
Imagination should be used, not to escape reality, but to create it.
Collin Wilson
Men in general are as much affected by what a thing appears to be as by what it is, indeed they are frequently influenced more by appearances than by reality.
Niccolò Machiavelli
It is as if there were in the human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more general than any of the special and particular ‘senses’ by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed. If this were so, we might suppose the senses to waken our attitudes and conduct as they so habitually do, by first exciting this sense of reality; but anything else, any idea, for example, that might similarly excite it, would have that same prerogative of appearing real which objects of sense normally possess.
William James
The trouble with poetry is it's often written to the sound of a drum only the poet may hear; nonetheless, blessed are those poets who always manage to find unshakeable pleasure in their own works.
Criss Jami
People debate over whether or not there is a literal Hell, in the literal sense often described as fire and eternal torture, which, to many, seems to be too harsh a punishment. If men really want to fear something, they should be fearing separation from God, the supposedly more comforting alternative to a literal Hell. For separation from the authorship of love, mercy, and goodness is the ultimate torture. If you think a literal Hell sounds too bad, you are very much underestimating the pain of being absolutely, wholly separated from the goodness while exposed to the reality of the holiness of God.
Criss Jami
I am not a human being enjoying a spiritual life, I am a spiritual being enjoying a human life.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
... every hypothesis is a construction, and because of this it is an authentic theory. In so far as they merit that exigent name, ideas are never a mere reception of presumed realities, but they are constructions of possibilities; therefore they are pure bits of imagination, or fine ideas of our own...
José Ortega y Gasset
The hope is indeed that some will experience and believe: The purpose of a number of spiritual gurus is to demonstrate to God-fearing men faux spirituality.
Criss Jami
It comes out from no source, it goes back in through no aperture. It has reality yet no place where it resides; it has duration yet no beginning or end. Something emerges, though through no aperture - this refers to the fact that it has reality. It has reality yet there is no place where it resides - this refers to the dimension of space. It has duration but no beginning or end - this refers to the dimension of time. There is life, there is death, there is a coming out, there is a going back in - yet in the coming out and going back its form is never seen. This is called the Heavenly Gate. The Heavenly Gate is nonbeing. The ten thousand things come forth from nonbeing. Being cannot create being out of being; inevitably it must come forth from nonbeing. Nonbeing is absolute nonbeing, and it is here that the sage hides himself.
Zhuangzi
If you can dispense with reputation, then you are free from care. Reputation is only a visitor, but reality is here to stay.
Liezi
A picture of a complete apple tree, however accurate, is in a certain sense much less like the tree itself than is a little daisy.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
He woke once more to external reality, looked round him, knew what he saw- knewit, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust, for the recurrent deliriumof his days and nights, the nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness.
Aldous Huxley
Walking in ignorance is a choice for those who find reality too hard to face.
T.F. Hodge
So it happens that we must ask ourselves, with regard to truth, not for a new criterion for it, which will be better polished than earlier ones, but, peremptorily and seizing it by the lapels, "what is truth as such," and with regard to reality, not what things are or what and how is that which is, but for what reason that X which we call Being is in the Universe, and with regard to knowledge we must not ask for its bases and limits—as Plato, Aristotle Descartes, Kant did—but for something which comes before all this: for what reason we concern ourselves with trying to know.
José Ortega y Gasset
We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is a harsh reality that some of the most important and respectable jobs which deserve high salaries might be better off with low salaries. A politician, or a minister, or a teacher is sure to be working sincerely and selflessly for the good of the people when through and through there is little monetary reward guaranteed. This is how the charlatans are weeded out of the field.
Criss Jami
Only if God IS ultimate reality, can he be our unconditional concern; only then can he be the object of surrender, obedience, and assent. Faith in anything which has only preliminary reality is idolatrous.
Paul Tillich