c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
There is much in this vision that will remind you of your mystics; yet between them and us there is far more difference than similarity, in respect both of the matter and the manner of our thought. For while they are confident that the cosmos is perfect, we are sure only that it is very beautiful. While they pass to their conclusion without the aid of intellect, we have used that staff every step of the way. Thus, even when in respect of conclusions we agree with your mystics rather than your plodding intellectuals, in respect of method we applaud most your intellectuals; for they scorned to deceive themselves with comfortable fantasies.
— Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men
...much theological discussion is wasted, not because the words used have no possible meaning, but because the people who use them don't mean anything by them.
— Rosemary Haughton, The Transformation of Man
A false-statement requires deceit and distortion for someone to buy it, but a truthful-statement sells itself.
— William Bailey, Great Ship of Knowledge: Learning Earth's Deathly History
People will not remember what you did for living,they will remember how you touched them with kindness and loving.
— Debasish Mridha
BLACK AND WHITEI was born intoA religion of Light,But with so many otherReligions andPhilosophies,How do I know whichONEIs right?Is it notMy birthrightTo seek out the light?To find TruthAfter surveying all the proof,Am I supposedTo loveOr fight?And why do all those whoTry to guide me,Always start by dividingAnd multiplying me – From what they considerWrong or right?I thought,There were no wallsFor whoever beams truth and light.And how can one speak on Light's behalf,lf all they doIs act black,But talk WHITE?
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of Augustus Cæsar) were civil times. But superstition hath been the confusion of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, that ravisheth all the spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reversed order.
— Francis Bacon
…is postmodernity the pastime of an old man who scrounges in the garbage-heap of finality looking for leftovers, who brandishes unconsciousnesses, lapses, limits, confines, goulags, parataxes, non-senses, or paradoxes, and who turns this into the glory of his novelty, into his promise of change?
— Jean-François Lyotard
It is related that Sakyamuni [the historical Buddha] once dismissed as of small consequence a feat of levitation on the part of a disciple, and cried out in pity for a yogin by the river who had spent twenty years of his human existence learning to walk on water, when the ferryman might have taken him across for a small coin.
— Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds oneself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter.
— Guy Debord
There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea’, for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
The easiest way to be reborn is to live and feel life everyday
— Munia Khan
Share your love, share you happiness, care for others; your wealth will be endless.
— Debasish Mridha
The secret of happiness is love and secret of love is nonjudgmental care.
— Debasish Mridha
Love is a chemical reaction,But it cannot be fully understood or defined by science.And though a body cannot exist without a soul,It too cannot be fully understood or defined by science.Love is the most powerful form of energy,But science cannot decipher its elements.Yet the best cure for a sick soul is love,But even the most advanced physicianCannot prescribe it as medicine.INCOMPLETE SCIENCE by Suzy Kassem
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
love as a passion—it is our European specialty—must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Etre dans le vent, c'est avoir le destin des feuilles mortes.
— Jean Guitton
How could someone possibly be that beautiful? She wondered for the hundred thousandth time. What higher power orchestrated such a perfect union of genes? Who decided that one single solitary soul deserved skin like that? It was so fundamentally unfair.(Chasing Harry Winston)
— Lauren Weisberger
Some of us are busy doing things
—  some of us are busy complaining.
The purer your heart, the lighter your spirit will be. The lighter your spirit, the closer to light it will float. The closer to light it is permitted to go, the higher it will float. The higher it floats, the closer to God you will be. Heaven has seven layers. The vibrations of your good deeds, which will be reflected by the weight of your conscience and the purity of your heart, will determine the layer in which your soul will reside. Your goal is to make your heart as light as a feather. The heavier the heart, the more chained to this hell it will remain.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Expressing doubt is how we begin a journey to discover essential truths.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Almost all arguments for skepticism make reference to seemingly ridiculous possibilities—we are being deceived by an evil demon, life is just a dream, we are brains in vats. You might propose psychoanalysis, rather than philosophical reflection, for anyone who worries about these possibilities.
— Richard Feldman
Maybe we should always start everything from the inside and work to the outside, and not from the outside to the inside. What d'you think?
— Aidan Chambers, Postcards from No Man's Land
If you want to bring the world closer to peace, be a peacemaker by creating peace whenever you can. If you find yourself engaged in an argument that only stirs anger in the heart, quickly make peace and carry on.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Good authors worry about genres great authors don't.
— Frank X. Gaspar
I was at ease in everything, to be sure, but at the same time satisfied with nothing. Each joy made me desire another. I went from festivity to festivity. On occasion I danced for nights on end, ever madder about people and life. At times, late on those nights when the dancing, the slight intoxication, my wild enthusiasm, everyone’s violent unrestraint would fill me with a tired and overwhelmed rapture, it would seem to me—at the breaking point of fatigue and for a second’s flash—that at last I understood the secret; I would rush forth anew. I ran on like that, always heaped with favors, never satiated, without knowing where to stop, until the day -- until the evening rather when the music stopped and the lights went out.
— The Fall
whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived
— Baruch Spinoza
Our enemies are quite good for relentlessly keeping us sharp and on our toes. This especially goes for sincere philosophers. They use their enemies to challenge their arguments so that they can know the weak points in their own reasoning and how to argue for and strengthen their position. There are just none like one's enemies to always look for his mistakes and do it harder than anyone else.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business.
— Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
The poet…is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.
— Jacques Derrida
We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory
—  to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.
The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason.
— Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving "as if" they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable.
— Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian
A lie never grows old.
— Sophocles, White Lies
The cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second
— Jean-Luc Godard
Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails, Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails.
— Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
Sometimes the sound of silence is the most deafening sound of all.
— K.L. Toth
Freedom is an absolute state, there is no such thing as being half-free.
— Daniel Delgado F
Despite its successes, in the end, philosophical thinking always falls short of its real goal. It involves both the wonder of aspiring toward the Truth and the distress of falling short of that Truth. In this way, philosophy can be characterized as wondrous distress.
— John Marmysz, The Path of Philosophy: Truth, Wonder, and Distress
Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear -- and doubt.
— H.A. Dorfman
Their [philosophers] thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Life is like yoga
—  the only way you can enjoy it is by relaxing into any position you happen to find yourself in.
For a game, you don’t need a teacher.
— Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
It's not enough merely to exist. Every man has to seek in his own way to make his own self more noble and to relize his own true worth.
— Albert Schweitzer
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect.
— Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words. And [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy: on experience, the mistress of their masters.
— Leonardo da Vinci
This is why they started us here so young: to give ourselves away before the age when the questions 'why' and 'to what' grow real beaks and claws.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
There is no problem more difficult to solve than that created by ourselves.
— Felix Alba-Juez, Galloping with Sound - The Grand Cosmic Conspiracy
Love' is the only weapon I have, I will defend with love, I will attack with love.
— Amit Kalantri
Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters.
— Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
One must reach out and try to grasp this astonishing finesse, that the value of lif cannot be estimated.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
Those who do not think bout the future cannot have one.
— Michael J. Kami
I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibers that absorb the sun, consuming and digesting. Under the thatched arbor of a restaurant on a river-bank, where Olivia had waited for me, our teeth began to move slowly, with equal rhythm, and our eyes stared into each other's with the intensity of serpents'—serpents concentrated in the ecstasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware, in our turn, of being swallowed by the serpent that digests us all, assimilated ceaselessly in the process of ingestion and digestion, in the universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinango a la vera cru-zana, and enchiladas.
— Italo Calvino, Under the Jaguar Sun
Never say no to now
— Benny Bellamacina, Piddly poems for children vol:3
According to the Buddha's teaching the beginning of the life-stream of living beings is unthinkable. THe believer in the creation of life by God may be astonished at this reply. But if you were to ask him 'What is the beginning of God?' he would answer without hesitation 'God has no beginning', and he is not astonished at his own reply.
— Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught: Revised and Expanded Edition with Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada
Ignore a person kill the person.
— M.Azeem Talib
Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.
— Epicurus
There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.
— Siri Hustvedt, The Summer Without Men
To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.
— James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility
You see, the deaf have an intimacy with silence. It’s there in their dreams.
— Shane L. Koyczan
If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?
— Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I tire of your whining.
— N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim.
— Bertrand Russell, Dictionary of Mind, Matter and Morals
Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Where humanitysowed faith, hope, and unity, joy’s garden blossomed.
— Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
You know, bicycling isn't just a matter of balance," I said. "it's a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I'm going to call that the Bicyclist's Philosophy of Life.
— Susan Vreeland, Clara and Mr. Tiffany
All men have their frailties; and whoever looks for a friend without imperfections, will never find what he seeks.
— Cyrus the Great
A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty
—  but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.
Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked.
— Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
— Socrates
I think I exist, therefore I exist. I think.
— David Gerrold, The Man Who Folded Himself
Look, girls know when they’re cute,” he said. “You don’t have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn’t have a job. I was like, ‘How are you going to get a job there in this market?’ And she’s like, ‘I’ll wink and I’ll smile.’ She’s a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen.
— Daniel Amory, Minor Snobs
Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.
— Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves
It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone calls Him reasonable.
— Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock
Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp.
— Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.
— Alain de Botton
There's no backward and no forward, no day other than this. You fill your cart as you go, and that's that.
— John Burnham Schwartz, Northwest Corner
Were prayers of murderers, when fighting on the “right side” of the war, ever heard—let alone answered?
— Kristina McMorris, Letters From Home
Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth.
— Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
Snow floated down every once in a while, but it was frail snow, like a memory fading into the distance.
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Believe in human beings - not all are good, but deep down all can be. But that doesn't mean you need to hang around crappy people and try to turn them around.
— Jonas Eriksson
It's not him who's disturbed. But he likes to disturb others--to shake them out of their rut.
— Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
Be the kind of person who catches the shit before it hits the fan, not the one who scrapes it off afterwards.
— Jonas Eriksson, The Wake-Up Call
We're on a planet, relax!
— Benny Bellamacina, Piddly Poems for Children, v.2
Make life easier by living in the present and believing in the future.
— Jonas Eriksson
If you appreciate the small things, you're likely to get the big ones.
— Jonas Eriksson
Men have such a good opinion of themselves, of their mental superiority and intellectual depth; they believe themselves so skilled in discerning the true from the false, the path of safety from those of error, that they should be forbidden as much as possible the perusal of philosophic writings.
— حجة الإسلام أبي حامد محمد الغزالي
The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.
— Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
Flexibility makes buildings to be stronger, imagine what it can do to your soul.
— Carlos Barrios
The warrior learns of the spiritual realm by dwelling on the cutting edge of the sword, standing at the edge of the fire pit, venturing right up to the edge of starvation if necessary. Vibrant and intense living is the warrior's form of worship.
— Stephen K. Hayes
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
We each have within ourselves the ability to shape our own destinies. That much we understand. But, more important, each of us has an equal ability to shape the destiny of the universe. Ah, that you find more difficult to believe. But I tell you it is so. You do not have to be the leader of the Council. You do not have to be king or monarch or the head of a clan to have a significant impact on the world around you.In the vastness of the ocean, is any drop of water greater than another?No, you answer, and neither has a single drop the ability to cause a tidal wave.But, I argue, if a single drop falls into the ocean, it creates ripples. And these ripples spread. And perhaps - who knows - these ripples may grow and swell and eventually break foaming upon the shore.Like a drop in the vast ocean, each of us causes ripples as we move through our lives. The effects of whatever we do - insignificant as it may seem - spread out beyond us. We may never know what far-reaching impact even the simplest action might have on our fellow mortals. Thus we need to be conscious, all of the time, of our place in the ocean, of our place in the world, of our place among our fellow creatures.For if enough of us join forces, we can swell the tide of events - for good or for evil.
— Margaret Weis, The Seventh Gate
What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. "What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question "What is best?," a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and "best" was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
The sole philosophy open to those who doubt the possibility of truth is absolute silence -- even mental.
— Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy
And so these refined parents rejected their five-year-old girl to all kinds of torture. They beat her, kicked her, flogged her, for no reason that they themselves knew of. The child’s whole body was covered in bruises. Eventually they devised a new refinement. Under the pretext that the child dirtied her bed (as though a five-year-old deep in her angelic sleep could be punished for that), they forced her to eat excrement, smearing it all over her face. And it was the mother that did it! And that woman would lock her daughter up in the outhouse until morning and she did so even on the coldest nights, when it was freezing. Just imagine the woman being able to sleep with the child’s cries coming from that outhouse! Imagine that little creature, unable to even understand what is happening to her, beating her sore little chest with her tiny fist, weeping hot, unresentful, meek tears, and begging ‘gentle Jesus’ to help her… ...let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, only to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it?
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
If we are in a general way permitted to regard human activity in the realm of the beautiful as a liberation of the soul, as a release from constraint and restriction, in short to consider that art does actually alleviate the most overpowering and tragic catastrophes by means of the creations it offers to our contemplation and enjoyment, it is the art of music which conducts us to the final summit of that ascent to freedom.
— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, On the Arts: Selections from G.W.F. Hegel's Aesthetics or the Philosophy of Fine Art
The real enemy" is the totality of physical and mental constraints by which capital, or class society, or statism, or the society of the spectacle expropriates everyday life, the time of our lives. The real enemy is not an object apart from life. It is the organization of life by powers detached from it and turned against it. The apparatus, not its personnel, is the real enemy. But it is by and through the apparatchiks and everyone else participating in the system that domination and deception are made manifest. The totality is the organization of all against each and each against all. It includes all the policemen, all the social workers, all the office workers, all the nuns, all the op-ed columnists, all the drug kingpins from Medellin to Upjohn, all the syndicalists and all the situationists.
— Bob Black, The Abolition of Work & Other Essays
It’s ever been the way of the man of science or philosophy. Most folks stay in the dark and then complain they can’t see nothing.” – Snipes (185)
— Ron Rash, Serena
...as I get older, I find myself insisting on my right to be philosophically sloppy.
— Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.
— Joseph de Maistre
Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set.
— Raymond Chandler
The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers...of all men to the extent they desire to know. But in fact, this includes only a few, the true friends, as Plato was to Aristotle at the very moment they were disagreeing about the nature of the good...They were absolutely one soul as they looked at the problem. This, according to Plato, is the only real friendship, the only real common good. It is here that the contact people so desperately seek is to be found...This is the meaning of the riddle of the improbable philosopher-kings. They have a true community that is exemplary for all other communities.
— Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.
— Ayn Rand
Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all.
— Margaret Fuller
God's pleasure--the beauty creation possesses in his regard--underlies the distinct being of creation, and so beauty is the first and truest word concerning all that appears within being; beauty is the showing of what is; God looked upon what he had wrought and saw that it was good.
— David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth
Even though people about us choose the path of hate and violence and warfare and greed and prejudice, we who are Christ's body must throw off these poisons and let love permeate and cleanse every tissue and cell. Nor are we to allow ourselves to become easily discouraged when love is not always obviously successful or pleasant. Love never quits, even when an enemy has hit you on the right cheek and you have turned the other, and he's also hit that.
— Clarence Jordan, The Substance of Faith: And Other Cotton Patch Sermons
The vivid force of his mind prevailed, and he fared forth far beyond the flaming ramparts of the heavens and traversed the boundless universe in thought and mind.
— Titus Lucretius Carus
The ramdomness of events in the world is so lacking in logic that we give it names like destiny, fate, karma and kismat to deal with the irrationality of its sequence
— Anirban Bose, Bombay Rains, Bombay Girls
Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.
— Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus
Philosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
— Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
L'étude du beau est un duel où l'artiste crie de frayeur avant d'être vaincu.
— Charles Baudelaire, Petits Poemes En Prose
There are no free lunches in philosophy any more than in real life.
— Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation
Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, کتاب آبی
THE PRESOCRATIC PROBLEM[all snap flags]Parmenides named his gun The Hot Power of the Stars. His gun was one, uncreated, imperishable, timeless, changeless, perfect, spherical. Spherical was the problem.
— Anne Carson, Decreation
Light in comparison with darkness is a void.
— Vladimir Nabokov
Together, "Light and Knowledge" are Inanimate, Intangible, and Inseparable.
— William Bailey, Great Ship of Knowledge: Learning Earth's Deathly History
I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity.
— Stefan Molyneux
Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable.
— Stefan Molyneux
Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.
— Seneca
Concerning Concealment as a symptom of love for Krsna:"It has been stated, 'although Srimati Radharani developed a deep loving affection for Krsna, She hid Her attitude in the core of Her heart so that others could not detect Her actual condition.
— A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Nectar of Devotion
Perfection is something we should all strive for. It's a duty and a joy to perfect one's nature... The most difficult thing is love. A loveless, driving person that just competes in the rat race is far from perfection in my book.
— R.D. Laing
Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice.
— John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
We did all the tourist crap, but I just wanted to sit in a cafe and watch people
— Sara Shepard, Ruthless
A life fueled by passions is like riding on the back of a dragon.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
On the Bigotry of Culture:: it presented us with culture, with thought as something justified in itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by it's own essence, whatever its concrete employment and content maybe. Human life was to put itself at the service of culture because only thus would it become charged with value. From which it would follow that human life, our pure existence was, in itself, a mean and worthless thing.
— José Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture and Literature
NOT to my contemporaries, not to my compatriots but to mankind I commit my now completed work in the confidence that it will not be without value for them, even if this should be late recognised, as is commonly the lot of what is good. For it cannot have been for the passing generation, engrossed with the delusion of the moment, that my mind, almost against my will, has uninterruptedly stuck to its work through the course of a long life.preface to the second edition of "the world as will and representation
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Being established in my life, buttressed by my thinking nature, fastened down in this transcendental field which was opened for me by my first perception, and in which all absence is merely the obverse of a presence, all silence a modality of the being of sound, I enjoy a sort of ubiquity and theoretical eternity, I feel destined to move in a flow of endless life, neither the beginning nor the end of which I can experience in thought, since it is my living self who think of them, and since thus my life always precedes and survives itself.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
You must go on.I can’t go on.I’ll go on.
— Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
There's more to logic than identifying logical fallacies.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
The ethos of redemption is realized in self-mastery, by means of temperance, that is, continence of desires.
— John Paul II
I tried to think the same thought in as many different religions as possible, so the thought itself wouldn't be limited by any particular way of reasoning, the way words restrict -- the whole eskimo-seventeen-words-for-snow idea.
— Patricia Geary, Strange Toys
Love is my inner strength and my power.
— Debasish Mridha
Be kind. It will reveal your true inner beauty.
— Debasish Mridha
Pain may be the only reality but if mankind had any sense it would pursue the delusion called happiness. All the philosophers and poets who tell us that pain and suffering have a place and purpose in the cosmic order of things are welcome to them. They are frauds. We justify pain because we do not know what to make of it, nor do we have any choice but to bear it. Happiness alone can make us momentarily larger than ourselves.
— Kiran Nagarkar
Art is whatever you can get away with.
— Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage
When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be.
— Oscar Wilde, de Profundis, the Ballad of Reading Gaol, and Other Poetry
On the one hand, all truth is relative; on the other hand, postmodernism tells it like it really is.On the one hand, all cultures are equally deserving of respect; on the other, Western culture is uniquely destructive and bad.Values are subjective--but sexism and racism are really evil.Technology is bad and destructive--and it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.Tolerance is good and dominance is bad--but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows.
— Stephen Hicks
The true philosopher is a man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his armchair.
— P.G. Wodehouse, Mike at Wrykyn
For wordsmiths and masters of words, without necessarily being harsh with words, the words have a tendency to shoot straight to the hearts of people, and this either deeply touches them or deeply angers them. Like the apostles in all their loving controversies are those who are masters of words while combining this gift with truth.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
I consider a dream like I consider a shadow,” answered Caeiro, with his usual divine, unexpected promptitude. “A shadow is real, but it’s less real than a rock. A dream is real — if it weren’t, it wouldn’t be a dream — but less real than a thing. That’s what being real is like.
— Álvaro de Campos
Be a worthy worker and work will come.
— Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give values to survival.
— Alice Duer Miller
There are situations in life which are beyond one. The sensible man realizes this, and slides out of such situations, admitting himself beaten. Others try to grapple with them, but it never does any good. When affairs get in a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his arm-chair. One's attitude towards Life's Little Difficulties should be that of the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn one day and happened to doze. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak sixty feet from the ground. He thought he would go home, but, finding this impossible, he altered his plans. "Well, well," he said, "if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here." Which he did, and had a not unpleasant time. The oak lacked some of the comforts of home, but the air was splendid and the view excellent.Today's Great Thought for Young Readers. Imitate this man.
— P.G. Wodehouse
The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men...
— Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
One does what one is
—  one becomes what one does.
I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.
— Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
To be, or not to be: what a question!
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World: Volume I
Nobody can tell what is right and what is wrong; what is righteous and what is evil. Even if there is a god and I had his teachings right before me, I would think it through and decide if that was right or wrong myself.
— Tsugumi Ohba, Death Note, Vol. 12: Finis
It's not about whether or not someone is a bigot, but whether or not the argument which that someone is arguing is worth being a bigot about.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Nobody wants to believe that existence carries on without at least taking a stumble from their departure of this world.
— Nenia Campbell, Terrorscape
Any person who, with all the sincerity of heart, is in search for God, on land or in the sea, is worthy of respect.
— Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi, The Religion of God
The most unlucky generation is the one which couldn't produce a hero to look upto.
— Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
But spontaneity is not by any means a blind, disorderly urge, a mere power of caprice. A philosophy restricted to the alternatives of conventional language has no way of conceiving an intelligence which does not work according to plan, according to a one-at-a-time order of thought. Yet the concrete evidence of such an intelligence is right to hand in our own thoughtlessly ordered bodies. For the Tao does not 'know' how it produces the universe just as we do not 'know' how we construct our brains.
— Alan W. Watts, The Way of Zen
Entertainment is temporary happiness, but the real happiness is permanent entertainment.
— Amit Kalantri
The more details, depth and thought you put into your ideas the more valuable they become.
— Simon Zingerman, We All Need Heroes: Stories of the Brave and Foolish
Now that science has helped us to overcome the awe of the unknown in nature, we are the slaves of social pressures of our own making. When called upon to act independently, we cry for patterns, systems, and authorities. If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate--in short, the emancipation from fear--then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.
— Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason
This sweet virginal primitive land will metaphorically breathe a sigh of relief --like a whisper of wind--when we are all and finally gone and the place and its creations can return to their ancient procedures unobserved and undisturbed by the busy, anxious, brooding consciousness of man.
— Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Do you not think that God will protect us?”“No,” he said flatly. “My experience is that He rarely attends to the obvious.
— Philippa Gregory, Changeling
Not only are there meaningless questions, but many of the problems with which the human intellect has tortured itself turn out to be only 'pseudo problems,' because they can be formulated only in terms of questions which are meaningless. Many of the traditional problems of philosophy, of religion, or of ethics, are of this character. Consider, for example, the problem of the freedom of the will. You maintain that you are free to take either the right- or the left-hand fork in the road. I defy you to set up a single objective criterion by which you can prove after you have made the turn that you might have made the other. The problem has no meaning in the sphere of objective activity; it only relates to my personal subjective feelings while making the decision.
— Percy Williams Bridgman, The Nature of Physical Theory
A crude age. Peace is stabilized with cannon and bombers, humanity with concentration camps and pogroms. We're living in a time when all standards are turned upside-down, Kern. Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What's more, there are whole races who believe it!
— Erich Maria Remarque, Flotsam
It takes a well-spent lifetime, and perhaps more, to crystalize in us that for which we exist.
— Jean Toomer, Cane
Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them.
— E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
This body is fragile. It is just flesh. Listen to the heartbeat. Life depends on the pumping of a muscle.
— Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening
We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately (...) To games or needles, to some other person.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Let people be the pursuits of happiness, you be the pursuit of perfection.
— Amit Kalantri
There may be some truth (atheists) do not need to believe in a god to be good, but then if they do not believe in a god, who do they believe gives the Universal Law of following good and shunning evil? Obviously, mankind. But then that is a dangerous thing, for if a man does not believe in a god capable of giving perfect laws, he is in the position of declaring all laws come from man, and as man is imperfect, he can declare that as fallible men make imperfect laws, he can pick and choose what he wishes to follow, that which, in his own mind seems good. He does not believe in divine retribution, therefore he can also declare his own morality contrary to what the divine may decree simply because he believes there is no divine decree. He may follow his every whim and passion, declaring it to be good when it may be very evil, for he like all men is imperfect, so how can he tell what is verily good? The atheist is in danger of mistaking vice for good and consequently follow another slave master and tyrant, his own physical and mental weakness. Evil would be wittingly or unwittingly perpetrated, therefore, to recognise the existence of a perfect divine being that gives perfect Universal Laws is much better than not to believe in a god, for if there is a perfect god, they will not allow their laws to be broken with impunity as in the case with many corrupt judges on earth, but will punish accordingly in due time. Therefore, to be pious and reverent is the surest path to true freedom as a perfect god will give perfect laws to prevent all manner of slavery, tyranny and moral wantonness, even if we do not understand why they are good laws at times.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
It is now generally admitted, at any rate by philosophers, that the existence of a being having the attributes which define the god of any non-animistic religion cannot be demonstratively proved... [A]ll utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical.
— A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic
Il y a les sachants et les savants: c'est la mémoire qui fait les uns, c'est la philosophie qui fait les autres. La philosophie ne s'apprend pas; la philosophie est la réunion des sciences acquises au génie qui les applique.
— Alexandre Dumas