Quotes by Philosophers - Page 252

The only reason that some people aren’t ashamed of their parents and/or siblings is because they know that we know that they did not choose them.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Perhaps the greatest importance of the family, in these days of contraceptives, is that it preserves the habit of having children.
Bertrand Russell
When a child reaches adolescence, there is very apt to be a conflict between parents and child, since the latter considers himself to be by now quite capable of managing his own affairs, while the former are filled with parental solicitude, which is often a disguise for love of power. Parents consider, usually, that the various moral problems which arise in adolescence are peculiarly their province. The opinions they express, however, are so dogmatic that the young seldom confide in them, and usually go their own way in secret.
Bertrand Russell
It is not difficult for an unwise mother quite unintentionally to centre the heterosexual feelings of a young son upon herself, and it is true that, if this is done, the evil consequences pointed out by Freud will probably ensue. This is, however, much less likely to occur if the mother's sexual life is satisfying to her, for in that case she will not look to her child for a type of emotional satisfaction which ought to be sought only from adults. The parental impulse in its purity is an impulse to care for the young, not to demand affection from them, and if a woman is happy in her sexual life she will abstain spontaneously from all improper demands for emotional response from her child.
Bertrand Russell
What knows he of love who has not been obliged to despise just what he loved
Friedrich Nietzsche
The word Familia did not originally signify the ideal of our modern philistine, which is a compound of sentimentality and domestic discord. Among the Romans, in the beginning, it did not even refer to the married couple and their children, but to the slaves alone. Famulus means a household slave and familia signifies the totality of slaves belonging to one individual. The expression was invented by the romans to describe a new social organism, the head of which had under him wife and children and a number of slaves, under Roman paternal power, with power of life and death over them all.
Friedrich Engels
Respect elders; protect children. This I do believe. As a young man it is sometimes, in a charitable sense, difficult to shake the sentiment that every elderly person is my grandparent, and every child is my child.
Criss Jami
Scorned and torn, former love mates aim and shoot childish devastating daggers that penetrate beyond target to pierce the heart of their offspring.
T.F. Hodge
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
Edmund Burke
Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.
Voltaire
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The moment we care for anything deeply, the world - that is, all the other miscellaneous interests - becomes our enemy. Christians showed it when they talked of keeping one's self "unspotted from the world;" but lovers talk of it just as much when they talk of the "world well lost." Astronomically speaking, I understand that England is situated on the world; similarly, I suppose that the Church was a part of the world, and even the lovers inhabitants of that orb. But they all felt a certain truth - the truth that the moment you love anything the world becomes your foe.
G.K. Chesterton
To be a Christian - a follower of Jesus Christ - is to love wisdom, love justice, and love freedom.
Cornel West
Christ didn't join in. He saw which direction the rocks were being thrown, and became a shield.
Criss Jami
I'm not a political Christian; for the most part I allow people even their vain, earthly rights. And I certainly don't see anti-Christians as bad or evil (as if they actually have the power to pose any kind of threat against God Almighty), but rather complete idiots I was commanded to love.
Criss Jami
It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, exceedingly narrow is the way to perdition!
Søren Kierkegaard
You are the enemy and a vessel through which the cure flows - if Christ lives in you, then you are an embodiment of the very shot this hostile and crying world needs as it, in every waking moment, struggles belligerently to resist.
Criss Jami
As for the secularist belief that says 'if we were to eliminate all religions, the world would know peace,' this is the Atheist Heaven; thus it is so important to him (although perhaps more laughable than some say the Christian Heaven). It is about as useless as saying 'if all people were true Christians, the world would know peace,' or 'if all people were devout Muslims, the world would know peace.' And even yet, the secular dream could remain active only for a time before generational rebellion and freedom of thought were to kick in anew.
Criss Jami
Our poor world aspires simply to point out where Christians have gone wrong, and that is pretty much where it goes wrong. It is as though many of us, when of the world, are actually all the more judgmental: for we are stuck on a bad Christian while the Christian is pinned to a good Christ.
Criss Jami
The Christian motto 'All men are brothers', however, also means that those who do not accept brotherhood are not men.
Slavoj Žižek
Prayer and fasting is what every Christian needs because prayer empowers you while fasting humbles you to be a better child of God.
Gift Gugu Mona
It is not the Church name that matters, but a Christ like character from every Christian that makes a difference.
Gift Gugu Mona
Knowlege of God without knowledge of man's wretchedness leads to pride. Knowledge of man's wretchedness without knowledge of God leads to despair. Knowledge of Jesus Christ is the middle course, because by it we discover both God and our wretched state.
Blaise Pascal
Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see tht there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.
Sam Harris
It's just because I have picked a little about mystics that I have no use for mystagogues. Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery. But the mystagogues hide a thing in darkness and secrecy, and when you find it, it's a platitude.
G.K. Chesterton
Holiness appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene, calm nature; which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness and ravishment to the soul.
Jonathan Edwards
For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?
Augustine of Hippo
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.We should like to skip the intermediate stages.We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time.And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste.Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be.Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you,and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
A Christian should be an Alleluia from head to foot
Augustine of Hippo
That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so. I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the churches compel one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man; in that case the Catholic Church says, 'This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must endure celibacy or stay together. And if you stay together, you must not use birth control to prevent the birth of syphilitic children.' Nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue.That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. 'What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.
Bertrand Russell
The hungriest wolf leads the pack.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Don't lose your time gazing at the spilled milk. There are other cows to milk
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Opportunity and risk come in pairs
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Strength is Life, Weakness is Death".
Swami Vivekananda
Failure is an opportunity to learn again
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Don't fear mistakes, they are your stepping stone to success
Bangambiki Habyarimana
You don't have to finish today, what is important is that you finish. But remember today might be the last day of your life.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Even if you can't win show defeat it can't get it the easy way.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Don't expect it to be given to you. It is there already. Get it if you want it.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
The gatekeepers are not there to prohibit you anything, they just want to frighten you away, if you are courageous enough to go through them, they will let you , thinking you are the owner or his so
Bangambiki Habyarimana
If you want to be extremely important in people's lives, give them extremely good services they can't find anywhere else
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Encouraging words are hands that pool others from the despair of life.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
You will not get the miracle you pray for until you realise you are the god to whom your prayers are directed
Bangambiki Habyarimana
A perfect work of art is not the one that has no mistakes. It is the one people will like. Creation is not perfect but god is praised for having created it
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Miracles are waiting for you. All you have to do is go and meet them
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Anything does not exist until it is created. You create it
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Opportunity is always coming but never knocks on the door. You have to get up and meet him
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Success sits on a mountain of mistakes
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Beware of people who tell you it can't be done. They want to remain on the market alone
Bangambiki Habyarimana
People who are afraid to become gods say “it's impossible
Bangambiki Habyarimana
The day you were born you were given power to create yourself
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Fortune is a goddess that reveals herself only to people who seek her
Bangambiki Habyarimana
When a protector leaves you, it looks like the end of the world. But you gradually learn to walk by your own feet
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Even if everybody says it’s impossible, with determination, there is always something you can do. The last thing is to give up without trying
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Design and produce yourself according to your dreams
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Fate does not expect to be fought and will reward those who dare to fight against it.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Some people quit when victory is around the corner
Bangambiki Habyarimana
See more than your eyes can see.Hear more than your ears can hear.Do more than your hands can do.Go further than your feet can go.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Know the limitations of your mind,and then excel them.Know the limitations of your heart,and then surpass them.Know the limitations of your soul,and then transcend them.
Matshona Dhiliwayo
I will ignore those who ridicule me.I will ignore those who undermine me.I will ignore those who undervalue me.I will ignore those who envy me.I will ignore those who disparage me.I will ignore those who betray me.I will ignore those who wrong me.I will embrace those who mentor me.I will embrace those who support me.I will embrace those who celebrate me.I will embrace those who improve me.I will embrace those who inspire me.I will embrace those who motivate me.I will embrace those who love me.
Matshona Dhiliwayo