Quotes by Philosophers - Page 9

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read.
Henry David Thoreau
Technically, you cannot really own a book you bought; you can only own the sheets of paper your copy is printed on; unless, of course, you are the book’s publisher.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence of literature implies that it cannot be replaced by non-literature
Tzvetan Todorov
Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth — often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.
Hypatia
For, from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretence of succession to St. Peter, their whole hierarchy, or kingdom of darkness, may be compared not unfitly to the kingdom of fairies; that is, to the old wives' fables in England concerning ghosts and spirits, and the feats they play in the night. And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: for so did the papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power.
Thomas Hobbes
I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator.
Criss Jami
I pity the man who praises God only when things go his way.
Criss Jami
Civilization is always threatened from below, by patterns of belief and emotion that may once have been useful to our ancestors, but that are useful no longer.
Roger Scruton
You are believing not in your god but in yourself if your god knows no better than you do...and yet, in this alone, I am afraid, you have already been fooling yourself.
Criss Jami
Stop blaming evil on the Devil, blame it on the Creator of everything, if you don't understand, ask Him or at least hope that someday He will reveal it to you
Bangambiki Habyarimana
It's true not because it's beyond doubt, but because we believe it to be true. We make it true. We are safe as long as no one can disprove us
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Many of us are literally prone to believing the most blatantly nonsensical untruths. There are some opinions and some beliefs so incredibly moronic, you actually feel stupid for not believing them; and it's probably because in giving the benefit of the doubt you self-doubt, you convince yourself into lame passivity and blind acceptance, you tell yourself, 'Maybe I'm just missing something here.
Criss Jami
I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it.
A.J. Ayer
As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.
Willard Van Orman Quine
In 1949, neurologist Egas Moniz (1874-1955) received a Nobel Prize for his discovery of ‘the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses’. Today, prefrontal leucotomy is derided as a barbaric treatment from a much darker age, and it is to be hoped that, one day, so too might antipsychotic drugs.
Neel Burton
I may not have had a great background, but I am grateful because nothing could have prepared me for the future than the past I've been through.
Gift Gugu Mona
My life doesn't bore me, because I know its worth. So when I let you be part of it, ensure you add value and not attempt to devalue it; or else you can never be part of my future.
Gift Gugu Mona
Visionaries will always meet opposition from weak minds but the seeds
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Visionaries will always meet opposition from weak minds but the seeds they plant always save the world
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Learn how they failed and succeeded, then fail on and succeed
Bangambiki Habyarimana
The most successful men work smart, not hard
Bangambiki Habyarimana
The road to your success is not a highway. You have to create it as you go
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Slay Goliath and the army behind him scatters.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Dream what others do not.Imagine what others have not.Do what others will not.Achieve what others could not.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Priceless diamonds often shape in worthless dirt.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The eagle only knows how high it can fly when it spreads its wings.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Today's tears sweep the road to tomorrow's blessings.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The palaces faith builds are greater than the prisons fear creates.
Matshona Dhliwayo
In order to bring down the great, you have to be able to reach the stars.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Pain in the wilderness is an investment in pleasure in the Promised Land.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The best the world has to offer comes from the best you have to give to others.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Stars shine so they can see the world, not so the world can see them.
Matshona Dhliwayo
In a world full of game players, the only way to set yourself apart is to be a game changer.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Risk little, earn little. Risk much, earn much. Risk all, earn all.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Today, the world rewards those with creative and intellectual muscles. So, women and skinny men need to shut up and start thinking.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
For certain you can be helped, should you accept it. But as far as being made...no one can do that. This occurred on the day you were born. An earth day is not a birth day. Own what you create as well as what you break.
T.F. Hodge
One who enjoys finding errors will then start creating errors to find.
Criss Jami
Whether you try too hard to fit in or you try too hard to stand out, it is of equal consequence: you exhaust your significance.
Criss Jami
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
Don't believe in everything that is written. Not everything that is written is true
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
The power of the writer is to capture the thoughts live and present them as they appeared in his mind
Bangambiki Habyarimana
A writer reports on the universe. When he presents his credentials, the gates of heaven and hell are equally opened to him. He can hear the devil’s defense and god’s accusations. The guards at the king’s heart let him in. The writer can be anything and any one he wants. When he writes he is a god, he creates.
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
Able writers let us into their minds and show us how they think and by that open our minds to ourselves
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
A writer is never alone, he is always with himself
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
Resign your destiny to higher powers.
William James
The only way to consistently perform at your potential is to ask: Am I better than I was yesterday?
Chris Matakas
My growth as a human being has been directly proportional to my growth as a marital artist.
Chris Matakas
The factory of love encompasses all, but on some days, does it seem to be one of suffocation, squeezing its target too tightly? And on other days not tight enough? Or maybe that is the breath of a living love knowing when to protect, when to release, and when to protect again. For we are the products of an active love - the Father the creator, the Son the perfecter, the Spirit the supervisor - but just like in a factory, to deny the process is to ultimately create a defect of oneself.
Criss Jami
Astray from a deep sleep chronic as I write by phonics, like insomnia I will always live the onyx night for revealing, and, upon it, still I'll steal the bright light of day right away just to keep building at speeds hypersonic.
Criss Jami
The greatest wealth is to live content with little.
Plato