Quotes by Philosophers - Page 6

For an ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it claims to possess either the key to history, or the solution for all the "riddles of the universe," or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws which are supposed to rule nature and man. Few ideologies have won enough prominence to survive the hard competitive struggle of persuasion, and only two have come out on top and essentially defeated all others: the ideology which interprets history as an economic struggle of classes, and the other that interprets history as a natural fight of races. The appeal of both to large masses was so strong that they were able to enlist state support and establish themselves as official national doctrines. But far beyond the boundaries within which race-thinking and class-thinking have developed into obligatory patterns of thought, free public opinion has adopted them to such an extent that not only intellectuals but great masses of people will no longer accept a presentation of past or present facts that is not in agreement with either of these views.
Hannah Arendt
If you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible.
Aldous Huxley
What we see in a democracy governed by “representatives” is not a government “for the people” but an organized conflict of interests that only results in the setting up of unstable balances of power.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
The form of association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.
John Stuart Mill
Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.
Noam Chomsky
Do not focus your gaze on things that are wrong, for what you see, slowly begins to penetrate you. You are addicted to fixing your eyes on the wrong; you pay attention only to what is wrong inside you. The angry man concentrates on his anger, and how to get rid of it. Though he wants to get rid of the anger, he is actually concentrating on that white line of anger within him; the more he concentrates the more he is hypnotized by it.Don’t worry! Everybody is! Don’t focus your eyes on the anger, but concentrate on compassion. Concentrate on what is right. As the right gets more and more energy, the strength of the wrong gets weaker and weaker. Ultimately it will disappear. This happens because energy is one; you cannot use it in two ways. If you have utilized your energy in becoming peaceful, you would have no energy for restlessness. All your energy has moved towards peace, and if you have had a taste of peace and serenity, why bother to become restless? You can maintain your restlessness only if you have never known the flavour of serenity. You can dive into the pleasures of the world only if you have not tasted the divine.
Osho
When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people become a monarch... such people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power and becomes like a master.
Aristotle
With its continued dismissal of the law of God in ethics, Fundamentalism expressed both a "spiritualized" form of situational ethics and a "Christianly submissive" statism.
Greg L. Bahnsen
Of all the wicked heresies and threatening movements facing the church in our day, when Westminster Seminary finally organized their faculty to write something in unison, they gave their determined political efforts not to fight socialism, not to fight homosexuality, not abortion, not crime and mayhem in our society, not subjectivism in theology, not dispensationalism, not cultural relativism, not licentiousness, not defection from the New Testament, not defection from the Westminster Confession of Faith, all of which are out there and they can give their legitimate efforts to… boy the thing they had to write about was theonomy! How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he doesn’t see the problem?
Greg L. Bahnsen
In the beginning there was nothing, and then god created "me".
Bangambiki Habyarimana
There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.
Thomas Paine
Daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh; the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time.
Umberto Eco
Smile, even when others do not.Care, even when others will not.Love, even when others could not.Give, even when others cannot.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Be a teacher.Be a healer.Be a giver.Be a winner.
Matshona Dhliwayo
A flawed rose is better than a flawless dandy lion.
Matshona Dhliwayo
A star never lets anything dull its sparkle, not even darkness.
Matshona Dhliwayo
When you are walking on water it is fear, not sharks, that sinks you.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Don't be afraid of marrying the right person even if they come from the wrong background.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Never commit to what you are not willing to do.
Gift Gugu Mona
If our eyes could see everything, every man would see his own faults.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If the heart had a brain kind people would rule the world.
Matshona Dhliwayo
I am 1324512000 seconds old. In the cosmic blink of an eye, I will become once again cosmic dust.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
If you want a meaningful life for yourself don't ask "What can the world offer to me?" but "What can I offer to the world?
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Be like a rose; no matter how many thorns you encounter in life, bloom.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Don't look for Mrs. Right if all your character demonstrates is you are Mr. Wrong.
Matshona Dhliwayo
As a bird with beautiful feathers is the target of hunters, so the gifted are targets of the envious.
Matshona Dhliwayo
There are many fish in the sea, but never let a good one swim away.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If money could buy happiness, the rich would not drown their sorrows in expensive wine.
Matshona Dhliwayo
You are like a seed; your greater beauty lies not on the outside, but within.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Not everyone who has helped or is helping you wanted or wants to help you.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
For the greater good":the phrase that always precedesthe greatest evil.
Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
The more civilized people are, the more honorable working hard is to them. As a result, the more civilized we get, the less we live.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Schooling is a manufacturing process whereby the raw material called curious boys is turned into products called obedient men.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The office’ is a cemetery of dreams.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Weekends are an employee’s parole.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Granted, not all uneducated women are prostitutes, and, not all prostitutes are uneducated. However, where building a family is employment, an uneducated woman's womb is her diploma.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
School programs the schooled to type a CV. Life inspires the unschooled to type a business plan.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Old Age homes are civilization's dumpsites for human beings who it cannot exploit further.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A diploma is a piece of paper that is used to acquire another piece of paper: an employment contract.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If working-hours were natural, then employed men would only get erections between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. … during the week.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A celebrity's body is an advertiser's canvas.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Weekends are life’s gift to those who hate their jobs.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
An education system is best belittled when the so-called educated gets hired by a company that’s owned by a so-called dropout.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
School is a factory where the raw material called student is turned into a product called employee.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Most self-employed people remain slaves to the employed’s working hours.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Self-employment killed the weekend.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
We are so used to working that not working is the new hard work.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
When a man's bank balance becomes too small, his woman flees. For a man to do the same, his woman's body — or vagina — has to do the opposite.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
12% of employees study further to learn more. 88% of employees study further to earn more.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The garden is an unemployed township-based man's cubicle.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
He who makes $25,000 annually through passive income is more enviable than he who earns $100,000 annually through a salary.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The seer does not see, by choice, what the blind can see by default... from within.
T.F. Hodge
Leaders can set targets as high as they like, but when followers are not aware of the vision in place; it may just be another futile endeavor.
Gift Gugu Mona
Smartphones are tools which fools fiddle with when they are around people that they don’t have the courage, or, the intellect, to converse with.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A phone call should be a convenience to the caller, not an inconvenience to the called.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Those who find it hypocritical of others to use, say, a smartphone, to speak ill of capitalism, needs to be reminded that capitalism is an ideology, not a technology.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
To live in modernity--an era contemporaneous with the triumph of the news--is to be constantly reminded that, thanks to science and technology, change and improvement are continuous and relentless. This is part of the reason we must keep checking the news in the first place: we might at any moment be informed of some extraordinary development that will fundamentally alter reality. Time is an arrow following a precarious, rapid and yet tantalizingly upward trajectory.
Alain de Botton
No power on earth, if it labours beneath the burden of fear, can possibly be strong enough to survive.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.
Augustine of Hippo
Before civilization, artists painted for the living. Today, most paint for a living.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana