Quotes by Philosophers - Page 349

Einer hat immer Unrecht: aber mit zweien beginnt die Wahrheit. Einer kann sich nicht beweisen: aber zweie kann man bereits nicht widerlegen.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Faith can be interested in results only, for a truth once recognized as such puts an end to the believer's thinking.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
When a man has a gift in speaking the truth, brute aggression is no longer his security blanket for approval. He, on the contrary, spends most of his energy trying to tone it down because his very nature is already offensive enough.
Criss Jami
He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions. He came to see his early failure as a lucky break, an accidental escape from a trap that had been set for him, and he was very trap-wary about institutional truths for the remainder of his time.
Robert M. Pirsig
Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth and to assimilate it from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign peoples. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself; it never cheapens or debases him who reaches for it but ennobles and honors him.
Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi
I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When it shall be desired to enlighten man, let him always have truth laid before him. Instead of kindling his imagination by the idea of those pretended goods that a future state has in reserve for him, let him be solaced, let him be succoured; or, at least, let him be permitted to enjoy the fruit of his labour; let not his substance be ravaged from him by cruel imposts; let him not be discouraged from work, by finding all his labour inadequate to support his existence, let him not be driven into that idleness that will surely lead him on to crime: let him consider his present existence, without carrying his views to that which may attend him after his death: let his industry be excited; let his talents be rewarded; let him be rendered active, laborious, beneficent, and virtuous, in the world he inhabits; let it be shown to him that his actions are capable of having an influence over his fellow men, but not on those imaginary beings located in an ideal world.
Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
What we call fundamental truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others.
Albert Camus
We can be seduced...by powerful political groups that promise more wealth and lower taxes. Those with power can use clever, psychological tricks and play upon our weaknesses and brokenness in order to attract us to their way of thinking. We can be manipulated into illusion.
Jean Vanier
Atât de mare e puterea adevărului care, precum binele, se răspândește de la sine.
Umberto Eco
Vivid simplicity is the articulation, the nature of genius. Wisdom is greater than intelligence; intelligence is greater than philosobabble.
Criss Jami
From time to timeI once wondered how one wanders from time to timeAnd think up the paradox lineSpeak of Epoch's crimeOh I lied, it hasn't happened yetBut bet you better believe it's such a habit thatI just said that in a past mindset
Criss Jami
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
Blaise Pascal
Life would again have to make superhuman efforts, "as in a battle," to break open for himself a path through the truths created by the sciences which "dream of being but cannot see it in waking reality.
Lev Shestov
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
G.K. Chesterton
Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.
Ludwig Feuerbach
Claiming to love self, but willingly default to cheating at the first sign of trouble is nothing short of playing yourself. Your ego may feel avenged - temporarily - but your heart and soul, the true self, will suffer the long term affects of karma's justifiable sting.
T.F. Hodge
Es gibt immer einen Punkt dabei, wo man nicht mehr weiß, ob man lügt oder ob das, was man erfunden hat, wahrer ist als man selber.
Robert Musil
Truth resists being projected into the realm of knowledge.
Walter Benjamin
Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment.
Allan Bloom
Lead us toward a speech, which is as beautiful as silence, and toward a silence, which is as beautiful as the sweetest and truest of words. (119)
Jean-Yves Leloup
The truth of the matter was something much more subtle and tremendous than any plain physical miracle could ever be. But never mind that. The important thing was that, when I did see the stars (riotously darting in all directions according to the caprice of their own wild natures, yet in every movement confirming the law), the whole tangled horror that had tormented me finally presented itself to me in its truth and beautiful shape. And I knew that the first, blind stage of my childhood had ended.
Olaf Stapledon
The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support.
Albert Camus
Sometimes it is harder to accede to a thing than it is to see its truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence — either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous ‘embarkation’ and heroic conquest, or else to annihilate the persona and transcend the ego in an obscure rapture of sensuality, a frenzy of romantic passion, more creditably, in the mutual charity of the perfect marriage.
Aldous Huxley
I did not know then what Brother William was seeking, and to tell the truth, I still do not know today, and I presume he himself did not know, moved as he was solely by the desire for truth, and by the suspicion - which I could see he always harbored - that the truth was not what was appearing to him at any given moment.
Umberto Eco
False judges are held up in the world’s admiration and I alone know the true ones.
Albert Camus
No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Truth is most beautiful undraped.
Arthur Schopenhauer
An outree explanation, violating all our preconceptions, would never pass for a true account of a novelty. We should scratch round industriously till we found something less excentric.
William James
on doit des égards aux vivants, on ne doit aux morts que la vérité.
Voltaire
Pride and power fall when the person falls, but discoveries of truth form legacies that can be built upon for generations.
Criss Jami
I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it's safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries.
Ayn Rand
I am going to die, but that is of no importance.
Muriel Barbery
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.
Umberto Eco
What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
Eugene T. Gendlin
The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
Alain de Botton
Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man.
Criss Jami
After awhile you realize that putting your actions where your mouth is makes you less likely to have to put your money where your mouth is.
Criss Jami
Many people in a rather reckless context claim to 'just tell it like it is'. In actuality, nobody really stresses what one says so much as the motive behind what one says; hence, he is merely blowing hot air and detracting from 'what is'.
Criss Jami
[His research into biblical criticism had lead him to the conclusion that most of what was contained in traditional religion simply wasn't true]Was I to lie in order to teach the truth? ...Was I to repeat these words? It was impossible. It was certain they would stick in my throat. On these grounds the separation was decided by me.
Felix Adler
We're very familiar with the idea that some things are so complex they're beyond our comprehension. This not only keeps us solving and experimenting but also distracted. Many things are really so simple we can't see them under our big noses.
Criss Jami
As followers of Christ, we are to be careful not to remain victims of the many cultural presuppositions of who he is, and what he teaches, insofar as taking for granted our own caricatures of him. Let it boil in both mind and heart the question, 'If Jesus were to appear today, how many of us would actually recognize him and his teachings (or would it simply be a recount of his first visit)?
Criss Jami
We too often forget that not only is there 'a soul of goodness in things evil,' but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.
Herbert Spencer
If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism — at least in the sense of this work — is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.
Ludwig Feuerbach
The dreams we imagine when we are asleep should not in any way make us doubt the truth of the thoughts we have when we are awake.
René Descartes
I never feel unsafe except for when the majority is on my side.
Criss Jami
What further helps to reveal reality is when our personal thinking ceases to take reality for granted.
Criss Jami
People would rather live in a community with unreasonable claims, than face loneliness with their truth
Bangambiki Habyarimana
The relationship between truth and reason:"Truth cannot be reached by reason alone!
Maurice Blondel
For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason.
Marcus Aurelius
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.
Richard M. Rorty
The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.
G.K. Chesterton
He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright
Blaise Pascal
In God's eyes, a man who teaches one truth and nothing else is more righteous than a man who teaches a million truths and one lie.
Criss Jami
After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?
Umberto Eco
If it's true what is said, that only the wise discover the wise, then it must also be true that the lone wolf symbolizes either the biggest fool on the planet or the biggest Einstein on the planet.
Criss Jami