Quotes by Philosophers - Page 98

Talent is hereditary; it may be the common possession of a whole family (eg, the Bach family); genius is not transmitted; it is never diffused, but is strictly individual.
Otto Weininger
He tried to explain and to convince. He knew, while he spoke, that it was useless, because his words sounded as if they were hitting a vacuum. There was no such person as Mrs. Wayne Wilmot; there was only a shell containing the opinions of her friends, the picture postcards she had seen, the novels of country squires she had read; it was this that he had to address, this immateriality which could not hear him or answer, deaf and impersonal like a wad of cotton.
Ayn Rand
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.
Eric Hoffer
Let us throw away our candles and our torches. Let us flood the cities with light. Let us bring a new light to men! -Equality 7-2521
Ayn Rand
All these men recognized what they themselves valued, and lived according to these values regardless of their relationship to the values of their community. Each lived according to what brought them happiness and peace rather than commonplace prescriptions of the multitudes.
Chris Matakas
There is another more psychological obstacle to the full development of love in the modern world, and that is the fear that many people feel of not preserving their individuality in tact. This is a foolish and rather modern terror. Individuality is not an end in itself; it is something that must enter into fructifying contact with the world, and in so doing must lose its separateness. An individuality which is kept in a glass case withers, whereas on e that is freely expended in human contacts becomes enriched.
Bertrand Russell
Life among clones would not be worth living, and a sane person will only rejoice that others have abilities that they do not share. That should be elementary.
Noam Chomsky
So you realized that there were always women in tears, or a red-headed man, or something else to spoil your effects?""Yes, naturally.
Jean-Paul Sartre
This is the age of the individual and there is no reason to believe that this focus of mankind is likely to change in the foreseeable future. Hence, the mission is to put individualism inside a wide context and to give it meaning and a sense of direction; to empower it – but authentically this time.
Shai Tubali
The Master said of Gong Yechang, “He is marriageable. Although he was once imprisoned and branded as a criminal, he was in fact innocent of any crime.” The Master gave him his daughter in marriage.(Analects 5.1)
Confucius
But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.
John Stuart Mill
In addition to conformity as a way to relieve the anxiety springing from separateness, another factor of contemporary life must be considered: the role of the work routine and the pleasure routine. Man becomes a 'nine to fiver', he is part of the labour force, or the bureaucratic force of clerks and managers. He has little initiative, his tasks are prescribed by the organisation of the work; there is even little difference between those high up on the ladder and those on the bottom. They all perform tasks prescribed by the whole structure of the organisation, at a prescribed speed, and in a prescribed manner. Even the feelings are prescribed: cheerfulness, tolerance, reliability, ambition, and an ability to get along with everybody without friction. Fun is routinised in similar, although not quite as drastic ways. Books are selected by the book clubs, movies by the film and theatre owners and the advertising slogans paid for by them; the rest is also uniform: the Sunday ride in the car, the television session, the card game, the social parties. From birth to death, from Monday to Monday, from morning to evening - all activities are routinised, and prefabricated. How should a man caught up in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and separateness?
Erich Fromm
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Henry David Thoreau
It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.
Eric Hoffer
Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
Henry David Thoreau
I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Any fool can do something cool and look cool, but it takes skill to make something uncool cool again.
Criss Jami
A man is known by the books he reads.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich Nietzsche
If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways.
Michel de Montaigne
I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities.
Ayn Rand
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart.
Friedrich Schiller
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
In medical science, as in daily life, it was unwise to jump to conclusions
Albert Camus
The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed
Henry David Thoreau
The way of the superior person is threefold; virtuous, they are free from anxieties; wise they are free from perplexities; and bold they are free from fear.
Confucius
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.
Henry David Thoreau
It is a poore Center of a Mans Actions, Himselfe.
Francis Bacon
Anyone can see that intending and not acting when we can is not really intending, and loving and not doing good when we can is not really loving.
Emanuel Swedenborg
Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.
Albert Camus
Worthy admonitions cannot fail to inspire us, but what matters is changing ourselves. Reverent advice cannot fail to encourage us, but what matters is acting on it. Encouraged without acting, inspired without changing – there’s nothing to be done for such people.
Confucius
Lord Chi Wen thought three times before taking any action. When the Master heard this, he said: Twice is plenty enough.
Confucius
In every action we must look beyond the action at our past, present and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all these things.
Blaise Pascal
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
John Locke
If ever again we happened to lose our balance, just when sleepwalking through the same dream on the brink of hell’s valley, if ever the magical mare (whom I ride through the night air hollowed out into caverns and caves where wild animals live) in a crazy fit of anger over some word I might have said without the perfect sweetness that works on her like a charm, if ever the magic Mare looks over her shoulder and whinnies: “So! You don’t love me!” and bucks me off, sends me flying to the hyenas, if ever the paper ladder that I climb so easily to go pick stars for Promethea—at the very instant that I reach out my hand and it smells like fresh new moon, so good, it makes you believe in god’s genius—if ever at that very instant my ladder catches fire—because it is so fragile, all it would take is someone’s brushing against it tactlessly and all that would be left is ashes—if ever I had the dreadful luck again to find myself falling screaming down into the cruel guts of separation, and emptying all my being of hope, down to the last milligram of hope, until I am able to melt into the pure blackness of the abyss and be no more than night and a death rattle,I would really rather not be tumbling around without my pencil and paper.
Hélène Cixous
He could have set fire to it, the garden was dry enough, and burned it clean—privet, vines, and weeds; but he waited in his rooms through the winter instead, weeping and dreaming.
William H. Gass
Eyes are a deaf man’s ears. Ears are a blind man’s eyes.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
As she looked at him, her dark gray eyes went slowly from astonishment to stillness, then to a strange expression that resembled a look of weariness, except that it seemed to reflect much more than the endurance of this one moment.
Ayn Rand
Lower those sable eyes regarding me,Lower them, my jewel; they are flogging me. (Report to Greco)
N. Kazantzakis
Your eyes will always be closer to your soul than to any other part of your body except the heart.
Sorin Cerin
The horse respects and obeys man because its large eyes magnify everything, so man appears much larger than the horse itself.
Stanisław Lem
Only in the eyes of love you can find infinity.
Sorin Cerin
Love doesn't think like that. All right, it's blind as a bat--''Bats have radar. Yours doesn't seem to be working.
Iris Murdoch
He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.
Alain de Botton
We are members of one great body, planted by nature…. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole
Seneca
No,' said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; 'I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry.' 'Well,' said Michael quietly, 'will you tell me one thing? Which of us has ever tried it?
G.K. Chesterton
If Innocent is happy, it is because he is innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments. It is just because he does not want to kill but to excite to life that a pistol is still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy. It is just because he does not want to steal, because he does not covet his neighbour's goods, that he has captured the trick (oh, how we all long for it!), the trick of coveting his own goods. It is just because he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex; it is just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons.
G.K. Chesterton
Salvation: to see each thing for what it is— its nature and its purpose.To do only what is right, say only what is true, without holding back.What else could it be but to live life fully— to pay out goodnesslike the rings of a chain, without the slightest gap.
Marcus Aurelius
Good deeds are ambassadors from Heaven.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realised and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.
Plato
He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.
Confucius
Where everything is bad it must be good to know the worst.
F.H. Bradley
Good men's actions are naturalWhile a scoundrel's charityIs carefully planned to please.
Abu al-Ala al-Ma'arri
The Master said, "I have not seen a person who loved virtue, or onewho hated what was not virtuous. He who loved virtue, would esteemnothing above it. He who hated what is not virtuous, would practicevirtue in such a way that he would not allow anything that is notvirtuous to approach his person."Is any one able for one day to apply his strength to virtue? I havenot seen the case in which his strength would be insufficient."Should there possibly be any such case, I have not seen it.
Confucius
In following the Way, the noble-minded treasure three things: a manner free of violence and arrogance, a countenance full of sincerity and trust, a voice free of vulgarity and impropriety.
Confucius
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.
Adam Smith
If someone asks me, “Why do you write?” I can reply by pointing out that it is a very dumb question. Nevertheless, there is an answer. I write because I hate. A lot. Hard. And if someone asks me the inevitable next dumb question, “Why do you write the way you do?” I must answer that I wish to make my hatred acceptable because my hatred is much of me, if not the best part. Writing is a way of making the writer acceptable to the world—every cheap, dumb, nasty thought, every despicable desire, every noble sentiment, every expensive taste.
William H. Gass