Quotes by Philosophers - Page 5

Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!
Immanuel Kant
When I write sometimes I strike gold, sometimes I labor in vain and keep producing rubbish
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Today almost everybody is a writer, the enormous publish button on blogs and websites begs you everywhere to click on it! And bam you are a writer. To hell with agents and publishing houses and rejection letters. Immortality for you is on the click of a mouth! We are advancing at the speed of light! You can become an author at 140 characters. To hell with long winding sentences and long hours of scratching the head, the immortals of today instantly get a "like" and they instantly enter the pantheon! They seat side by side Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, St Paul, Buddha, Martin Luther, Rousseau, Bangambiki…
Bangambiki Habyarimana
If I can write, who possibly can’t. Even drawing a line in the sand is writing
Bangambiki Habyarimana
If you are afraid of the critics you will never write a word
Bangambiki Habyarimana
You can edit what you write. Why not edit what you say? If it hurts somebody, you can still offer an apology or withdraw your statements
Bangambiki Habyarimana
You say you have nothing to write about? How do you find things to talk about? You can write about those things you like to talk about, that's your area of expertise
Bangambiki Habyarimana
We write, not because we claim to know more than others, but perhaps because we want to know more than others. Writers are explorers
Bangambiki Habyarimana
When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.
Criss Jami
Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities.
Criss Jami
Over the entrance to the temple at Delphi was a famous inscription: KNOW THYSELF! It reminded visitors that man must never believe himself to be more than mortal - and that no man can escape his destiny.
Jostein Gaarder
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
Plato
Every day, strive to refine your contagious shine, and shake the nonsense offered by those who lack the will to polish-up from within.
T.F. Hodge
Pride is born as a mountaintop on a valley, but dies as an abyss in which it is too deep and too dark to see the better.
Criss Jami
The hardest chore to do, and to do right, is to think. Why do you think the common man would choose labor, partially, as a distraction from his own thoughts? It is because that level of stress, he most absolutely abhors.
Criss Jami
The manic relief that comes from the fantasy that we can with one savage slash cut the chains of the past and rise like a phoenix, free of all history, is generally a tipping point into insanity, akin to believing that we can escape the endless constraints of gravity, and fly off a tall building. “I’m freeeee… SPLAT!”.
Stefan Molyneux
Needs are imposed by nature. Wants are sold by society.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
It is the nature of physics to hear the loudest of mouths over the most comprehensive ones.
Criss Jami
The foundation of morality on the human sentiments of what is acceptable behavior versus repulsive behavior has always made morals susceptible to change. Much of what was repulsive 100 years ago is normal today, and - although it may be a slippery slope - what is repulsive today is possible to be normal 100 years into tomorrow; the human standard has always been but to push the envelope. In this way, all generations are linked, and one can only hope that every extremist, self-proclaimed progressive is considering this ultimate 'Utopia' to which his kindness will lead at the end of the chain.
Criss Jami
Some skeptics believe religious people are religious because they fear Hell. It's about as fair as saying skeptics are skeptics because they fear the ridicule of modern society.
Criss Jami
But of all the instances of error arising from this physical fancy, the worst is that we have before us: the habit of exhaustively describing a social sickness, and then propounding a social drug.
G.K. Chesterton
The age of the skyscraper is gone. This is the age of the housing project. Which is always a prelude to the age of the cave.
Ayn Rand
There is absolutely nothing feminine about the colour pink, or, anything bad-luck'ish about the colour black — in itself.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The greatest wisdom is to be happy
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Experience is hard to acquire. Only the wise acquire it
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Valid questions are better than invalid assumptions.
Matshona Dhliwayo
You cannot marry your past without divorcing your future.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Don't cry over spilt milk when you can milk another cow.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Don't pluck a rose's petals and then ask the rose why it is sad.
Matshona Dhliwayo
An ugly diamond is still worth more than a beautiful pebble.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If you are too good to look after God’s trash, you are not good enough to look after God’s treasure.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If you don't take inventory of your blessings, ingratitude will try to steal them from you.
Matshona Dhliwayo
It is better to be accepted by the bright few than by the dull masses.
Matshona Dhliwayo
It is the ant, not the lion, which the elephant fears.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Water has no mouth, but swallows many. Light has no hands, but touches many. Wind has no feet, but carries many. Darkness has no teeth, but devours many.
Matshona Dhliwayo
It is impossible for light to bow before darkness.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If a bird does not bring out all of the songs on its heart, all its symphonies die inside.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The spoon’s color does not change the soup’s taste.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If you touch a wound while it is healing, you will prolong it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The quickest way to find honey is to follow bees.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The statue was of a young man with a tall, gaunt body and an angular face. He held his head as if he faced a challenge and found joy in his capacity to meet it.
Ayn Rand
It is a beautiful thing to be on fire for justice… there is no greater joy than inspiring and empowering others––especially the least of these, the precious and priceless wretched of the earth!
Cornel West
As long as there is thirst in you, water can quench it; but you can live a kind of life in which you never feel thirsty; do not go in the sun, do no manual work, stay at home and relax and you will not feel the thirst. But then you will find no joy in drinking water. He who toils all day, enjoys the bliss of a good night’s rest. This is ironical: if you want to enjoy the pleasure of a good night’s sleep you have to work like a labourer all day. The trouble is that you want to spend your days like an emperor and your nights like a labourer.
Osho
Morals are nothing but a civilized society’s attempt to tame some beast called man.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There is a correlation between the number of days since a man last had sex, and, the number of women that he is convinced he is in love with, or, the number of things that he is willing to do for a woman.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There is a correlation between the number of days since a man last had sex, and, the number of women that he is convinced he is in love with.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A horny man is seen. A horny woman is heard.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Sex is an open secret parents try to hide to their children
Bangambiki Habyarimana
AIDS would have claimed fewer lives if we had publicly recommended what I wish to call ‘The Presumption of Sickness,’ i.e., the principle that whomever we are about to sleep with is HIV-positive until proven HIV-negative.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Some women would not have contracted an STD or STDs had they not been on the pill.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The natural heat, say the good-fellows,first seats itself in the feet: that concerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middleregion, where it makes a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end, like a vapor that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress.
Michel de Montaigne
When you believe it, you've created it, whatever it is
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
Every time someone starts a project he is considered nuts, until he beats all the odds and laughs the last.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
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
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
Quiet people always know more than they seem. Although very normal, their inner world is by default fronted mysterious and therefore assumed weird. Never underestimate the social awareness and sense of reality in a quiet person; they are some of the most observant, absorbent persons of all.
Criss Jami
In the modern Christian attempt to take a stand as Christ did, and maybe for others, win the approval of the world, the Christian will often think that it consists of targeting and demoralizing fellow Christians and only fellow Christians. It is one thing to stand against religious hypocrisy when one sees it, but it is another to go on snorting at anything or anyone who might seem 'too Christian' to us. The irony is that by doing this we are further advocating hypocrisy and 'half-hearted Christians'.
Criss Jami
I love doing it. Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.
Ayn Rand