Quotes by Philosophers - Page 77

Perhaps no one has yet been truthful enough about what 'truthfulness' is.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Even on this level, it is at bottom not deception [men] hate but the dire, inimical consequences of certain kinds of deception
Friedrich Nietzsche
What was behind this smug presumption that what pleased you was bad or at least unimportant in comparison to other things? … Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked’ but … but what? … Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities.When you are trained to despise “just what you like” then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others — a good slave. When you learn not to do “just what you like” then the System loves you.
Robert M. Pirsig
Take that rose bush, for example. We are all looking at the same plant, but our perception of it varies according to the way we each think and see. One person may see a vigorous rose, another may see a rose that could benefit from a little pruning, and a third may see a mess that no amount of attention would save. The rose bush isn't changing; it's the way we personally perceive it that differs, the way each of us thinks that colors our perception.
Sydney Banks
A slave mentality which had been built into him by years of carrot-and-whip grading, a mule mentality which said, “If you don’t whip me, I won’t work.” He didn’t get whipped. He didn’t work.
Robert M. Pirsig
Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened."Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height.
Umberto Eco
Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine.
Plato
There is something divine in mindless beauty.
Albert Camus
Nothing about me is "deep", but my divine creator is so.
T.F. Hodge
In the aether I appear in fiery forms, And in the aer I sit in a silvery chariot; earth reigns in my black brood of puppies.
Porphyry
In a segment of the Sermon on the Mount, appearing in Matthew 5, Jesus is reported to have set six new teachings of his against six old Jewish teachings. The latter are introduced by such words as 'You have heard that it was said by them of old time' and the former by 'But I say unto you.'Since both the teachings of old time and Jesus' new teachings are predicated on the same profoundly mistaken views of human nature and of the world in general, it is unimportant for us here today to compare and contrast these teachings or to determine which is better or worse in some way or other. The point is that whether better or worse, in this way or that, both are lodged in an egregiously mistaken mythology -- but in a mythology of enormous importance for us, because it is one of the wellsprings of Western culture.
Delos McKown
God lives and works in history. The outward mythology changes, the inward truth remains the same.
Iris Murdoch
The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology.
Thomas Paine
There is an Iroquois myth that describes a choice the nation was once forced to make. The myth has various forms. This is the simplest version. A council of the tribes was called to decide where to move on for the next hunting season. What the council had not known, however, was that the place they eventually chose was a place inhabited by wolves. Accordingly, the Iroquois became subject to repeated attacks, during which the wolves gradually whittled down their numbers. They were faced with a choice: to move somewhere else or to kill the wolves. The latter option, they realized, would diminish them. It would make them the sort of people they did not want to be. And so they moved on. To avoid repetition of their earlier mistake, they decided that in all future council meetings someone should be appointed to represent the wolf. Their contribution would be invited with the question, ‘Who speaks for wolf?
Mark Rowlands
The world’s myths do not reveal a way to interpret the Gospels, but exactly the reverse: the Gospels reveal to us the way to interpret myth.
René Girard
The resistance to the mimetic contagion prevents the myth from taking shape. The conclusion in the light of the Gospels is inescapable: myths are the voice of communities that unanimously surrender to the mimetic contagion of victimization.
René Girard
Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self-deception we call mythology.
René Girard
If the Gospels were mythical themselves, they could not provide the knowledge that demythologizes mythology.
René Girard
What does our great historical hunger signify, our clutching about us of countless cultures, our consuming desire for knowledge, if not the loss of myth, of a mythic home, the mythic womb?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Or winters when the sloughs were frozen over and dead and i could walk across the ice and snow between the dead cattails and see nothing but grey skies and dead things and cold
Robert M. Pirsig
The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
And after winter folweth grene May.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Wisdom is knowing you know nothing
Socrates
We are a dream of a thought which lives trough the Word.
Sorin Cerin
Of how much light will my destiny’s eyes have to become aware until it will come true in death?
Sorin Cerin
The leaves of hopes which have destined words in the body of the thought have settled to the ground. This is the world.
Sorin Cerin
The one who did not understood that his time’s root supports his life tree was born in vain.
Sorin Cerin
We have a lot of thoughts throughout our entire life, but ultimately we get all to the conclusion of a single thought: Death!
Sorin Cerin
We are born more dead than when we die after we have searched death through the storm of the instants of our entire life.
Sorin Cerin
Not the measure of words is necessary, but their meaning.
Sorin Cerin
An ounce of wisdom can prevent a pound of folly.
Matshona Dhliwayo
What shell did not feel the sound waves and which bird did not face at least once the wind?
Sorin Cerin
Do not walk away from death because you came out of it.
Sorin Cerin
Has anyone succeeded in being his own desire?
Sorin Cerin
Do not rummage through your thought’s drawer because you will be ever more disorientated than they are.
Sorin Cerin
There are not wings of dreams that have not previously dealt with the flight of black thoughts.
Sorin Cerin
If you combine the suffering’s great color palette you will find happiness as well.
Sorin Cerin
Does somebody know why the consciousness of death has to die?
Sorin Cerin
No matter how many snowstorms will pass through you, none will bring you the spring like love will.
Sorin Cerin
One will never find in the waterfall of sights anything else than the Illusion of Life, which falls in torrents on the granite rocks of the souls.
Sorin Cerin
We cannot conceive death as anything else than the afterlife because we cannot comprehend death unless we live.
Sorin Cerin
I have reached this world’s dreams harbor as devoid of truth as any other soul that dreams it lives through knowledge.
Sorin Cerin
Who can hide himself from death or who can embrace the wind?
Sorin Cerin
However deaf the ring of our love bells should strike they will eventually disperse this world’s emptiness clouds.
Sorin Cerin
Just the inexplicable wants to be understood within the nonsense of emptiness that belongs to this world of illusion.
Sorin Cerin
Your soul fountain will never drain until the instant of eternity will halt before it to drink the water of death.
Sorin Cerin
To believe in what you don’t know is as true as to believe in what you do know as long as life is an illusion.
Sorin Cerin
All the stars in the sky cannot worth as much as yours only because it belongs to you.
Sorin Cerin
All the roads of life end in death.
Sorin Cerin
Nobody has ever been beyond his own Illusion of Life.
Sorin Cerin
However much we would adore the past it will forever die in the future with us.
Sorin Cerin
Nobody can open the gates of death without closing them again after him.
Sorin Cerin
Have you ever been further away than yourself? Where?
Sorin Cerin
What clouds may wet the gaze without hope of emptiness within us?
Sorin Cerin
Was there ever something not known before it was recognized?
Sorin Cerin
He takes a few dazed steps, the waiters turn out the lights and he slips into unconsciousness: when this man is lonely he sleeps.
Jean-Paul Sartre
When I look back at where I come from, I realize it's for a good reason that God changed my life.
Gift Gugu Mona
Traumas produce their disintegrating effects in proportion to their intensity, duration and repetition. (1909)
Pierre Janet
The popular element "feels" but does not always know or understand; the intellectual element "knows" but does not always understand and in particular does not always feel.
Antonio Gramsci
The meaning and worth of love, as a feeling, is that it really forces us, with all our being, to acknowledge for ANOTHER the same absolute central significance which, because of the power of our egoism, we are conscious of only in our own selves. Love is important not as one of our feelings, but as the transfer of all our interest in life from ourselves to another, as the shifting of the very centre of our personal life. This is characteristic of every kind of love, but predominantly of sexual love; it is distinguished from other kinds of love by greater intensity, by a more engrossing character, and by the possibility of a more complete overall reciprocity. Only this love can lead to the real and indissoluble union of two lives into one; only of it do the words of Holy Writ say: 'They shall be one flesh,' i.e., shall become one real being.
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov