c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
If we look through the aperture which we have opened up onto the absolute, what we see there is a rather menacing power--something insensible, and capable of destroying both things and worlds, of bringing forth monstrous absurdities, yet also of never doing anything, of realizing every dream, but also every nightmare, of engendering random and frenetic transformations, or conversely, of producing a universe that remains motionless down to its ultimate recesses, like a cloud bearing the fiercest storms, then the eeriest bright spells, if only for an interval of disquieting calm. We see an omnipotence equal to that of the Cartesian God, and capable of anything, even the inconceivable; but an omnipotence that has become autonomous, without norms, blind, devoid of the other divine perfections, a power with neither goodness nor wisdom, ill-disposed to reassure thought about the veracity of its distinct ideas. We see something akin to Time, but a Time that is inconceivable for physics, since it is capable of destroying without cause or reason, every physical law, just as it is inconceivable for metaphysics, since it is capable of destroying every determinate entity, even a god, even God. This is not a Heraclitean time, since it is not the eternal law of becoming, but rather the eternal and lawless possible becoming of every law. It is a Time capable of destroying even becoming itself by bringing forth, perhaps forever, fixity, stasis, and death.
— Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency
I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man's guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.
— Albert Einstein
This is considered almost holy work by farmers and ranchers. Kill off everything you can't eat. Kill off anything that eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn't feed what you eat.""It IS holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated.
— Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
God is not a celestial prison warden jangling the keys on a bunch of lifers--he's a shepherd seeking for sheep, a woman searching for coins, a father waiting for his son.
— Clarence Jordan, The Substance of Faith: And Other Cotton Patch Sermons
In the pragmatist, streetwise climate of advanced postmodern capitalism, with its scepticism of big pictures and grand narratives, its hard-nosed disenchantment with the metaphysical, 'life' is one among a whole series of discredited totalities. We are invited to think small rather than big – ironically, at just the point when some of those out to destroy Western civilization are doing exactly the opposite. In the conflict between Western capitalism and radical Islam, a paucity of belief squares up to an excess of it. The West finds itself faced with a full-blooded metaphysical onslaught at just the historical point that it has, so to speak, philosophically disarmed. As far as belief goes, postmodernism prefers to travel light: it has beliefs, to be sure, but it does not have faith.
— Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life
Fear is the polio of the soul which prevents our walking by faith.
— Clarence Jordan, The Substance of Faith: And Other Cotton Patch Sermons
Buffett does enjoy being a billionaire, but in offbeat ways. As he put it, though money cannot change your health or how many people love you, it lets you be in 'more interesting environments.
— Roger Lowenstein, Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist
Fear no more," said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o' the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered.Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Paranormalists, however, insist that our minds are transmitters that, with special effort, can focus like lasers to communicate across great distances, and even make things happen. That may seem far-fetched, but it's also a definition of prayer.
— Alan Weisman, The World Without Us
The method of 'postulating' what we want has many advantages 
—  they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.
€7,500, first-class, everything—and all that for 40 minutes selling them some old stuff.
— Slavoj Žižek
As life in general constituted much pain in the form of struggles against poverty, disease, ignorance, and emotional anguish, what more civilized way for people to alleviate the same than by giving themselves to one another as brothers and sisters in deed as well as in word? A society of people hoping to become politically superior needed first to become spiritually valid.
— Aberjhani, The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois
But the goal of the arts, culinary or otherwise, is not to increase our comfort. That is the goal of an easy chair.
— Jeffrey Steingarten, The Man Who Ate Everything
The actuality of us being cognizant and accepting of the fact we are but a speck of sand in a universe sized desert, whose existence is irrelevant to any facet of universal function is a hard pill to swallow. Knowing the world will go on for another billion years after death and you will have no recollection of anything, just as you have no recollection of the billion years before your birth is a mind-boggling intuition,
— Hewitt E. Moore, White Guilt
My mind is a lock pick always looking for another door to open. I often find those doors by exploring minds of others...
— Hewitt E. Moore, White Guilt
As for Doing-good,that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried itfairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agreewith my constitution. Probably I should not consciously and deliberatelyforsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands ofme, to save the universe from annihilation; and I believe that a likebut infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preservesit.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Before man ventures into daydreams about his futuristic society, he shouldfirst immerse himself in the nothingness of his being, and finally restore life to what it is all about: a working hypothesis.
— Tomislav Sunić
This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world's divinely appointed ruler: 'I will not LET them starve. I will not LET the drought come. I will not LET the river flood.
— Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
Whether divine or human, it is precisely the imagination that fashions and recognizes the universe as meaningful, abiding, and valuable, that is to say, as real.
— William K. Mahony, The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination
É muito mais lisonjeiro,(...)lutar-se por alguma coisa bela e ideal e saber ao mesmo tempo que não se conseguirá alcançá-la. Os ideais serão algo que se possa alcançar? Viveremos para cabar com a morte? Não, viveremos para temê-la e também para amá-la, e precisamente por causa da morte é que nossa vida vez por outra resplandece tão radiosa num belo instante.
— Hermann Hesse
He stole glances at the heathen faces of Bodien and Gaylord, the suffering, yet oddly consoled, eyes and mouth of Basellecci, noting the brave enthusiasm of men who had never dreamed of anything very definite, and it occurred to him through the reek of his person that there was only one hope for him, and for all people who had lost, through intelligence, the hope of immortality. "We must love and delight in each other and in ourselves!" he cried.
— Edward Lewis Wallant
The philosophic outlook rises above all sectarian controversy. It finds its own position not only by appreciating and synthesizing what is solidly based in the rival sects but also by capping them all with the keystone of nonduality.
— Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton
Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast. - Without haste, but without rest.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance and shimmy, and you've got an audience!
— Diogenes Laërtius
Perhaps swimming was dancing under the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one's questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread.
— Jim Harrison, The Man Who Gave Up His Name
A philosophy professor at my college, whose baby became enamored of the portrait of David Hume on a Penguin paperback, had the cover laminated in plastic so her daughter could cut her teeth on the great thinker.
— Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
Ethics is a dream.
— Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love
They all know the truth, that there are only three subjects worth talking about. At least here in these parts," he says, "The weather, which, as they're farmers, affects everything else. Dying and birthing, of both people and animals. And what we eat - this last item comprising what we ate the day before and what we're planning to eat tomorrow. And all three of these major subjects encompass, in one way or another, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, the physical sciences, history, art, literature, and religion. We get around to sparring about all that counts in life but we usually do it while we're talking about food, it being a subject inseparable from every other subject. It's the table and the bed that count in life. And everything else we do, we do so we can get back to the table, back to the bed.
— Marlena de Blasi, A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
One great function of the arts is to keep ideals alive in a culture that does not yet realize them.
— Susan Neiman, Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists
He will essentially follow the language of the spectacle, for it is the only one he is familiar with.
— Guy Debord
A philosophical thought is not supposed to be impervious to all criticism; this is the error Whitehead describes of turning philosophy into geometry, and it is useful primarily as a way of gaining short-term triumphs in personal arguments that no one else cares (or even knows) about anyway. A good philosophical thought will always be subject to criticisms (as Heidegger’s or Whitehead’s best insights all are) but they are of such elegance and depth that they change the terms of debate, and function as a sort of “obligatory passage point” (Latour’s term) in the discussions that follow.Or in other words, the reason Being and Time is still such a classic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of readers almost a century later, is not because Heidegger made “fewer mistakes” than others of his generation. Mistakes need to be cleaned up, but that is not the primary engine of personal or collective intellectual progress.
— Graham Harman
The universe is a philosophical abyss.
— Kedar Joshi
God is a philosophical black hole – the point where reason breaks down.
— Kedar Joshi
For the former, activity, any kind of activity, was an end in itself; for the latter, activity was but a progress toward the true end, which was rest, and peace of mind. Action was to be undertaken only when equilibrium was disturbed.
— Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men
I wanted that future officer to weigh decisions with a supple mind and to be comfortable with nuance and uncertainty. 
— Craig M. Mullaney, The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education
All these years of thinking, ending up like this: In front of all this beauty, understanding nothing.
— Bruce Cockburn
There is a common tendency to turn off one's imagination at certain points and refuse to contemplate the possibility of having to do certain things and cope with the attendant moral problems. The things simply get done by the social machine, and one can keep one's clear conscience and one's moral indignation unsullied.
— John Fraser, Violence in the Arts
La prueba de ausencia no es prueba de ausencia
— Carl Sagan
No woman in maternity confinement can have stranger and more impatient wishes than I have.
— Søren Kierkegaard
All I'm trying to say is that if you're not willing to observe this, if you're just going to condemn it, you're never going to see it. It's there, whether you like it or not. This is stupid life-force we're dealing with here," he said. "Think how old it is, Jim. Think how huge it is. Understanding it doesn't make any difference.
— Jim Paul, Catapult: Harry and I Build a Siege Weapon
Wenn man nachts nicht schläft, werden Träume wahr.
— Selim Özdogan
On ne peut opposer absraitement le spectacle et l'activité sociale effective.
— Guy Debord
Le spectacle est la reconstruction matérielle de l'illusion religieuse.
— Guy Debord
Jigga, Kells, Not Guilty
— R. Kelly
Whenever a soul leaves the body a void is felt across the world..
— Anonymous
Failure is when you stop trying to do something.So, if you want to succeed.Don't stop trying.
— Anthony T. Hincks
If you don't look. You can't see.
— Anthony T. Hincks
See the world for what it is.BEAUTIFUL!
— Anthony T. Hincks
It's the little things that make big things happen.
— Anthony T. Hincks
Your comfort zone is a place where you keep yourself in a self-illusion and nothing can grow there but your potentiality can grow only when you can think and grow out of that zone.
— Rashedur Ryan Rahman
Lo que sabemos es una gota de agua
—  lo que ignoramos es un océano.
Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.
— Seneca, Letters From A Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium (Illustrated. Newly revised text. Includes Image Gallery + Audio): All Three Volumes
When you are able to love yourself deeply, you can be kind to others.
— Debasish Mridha
There are only two most powerful situations- being so small that you have nothing to lose and being so big that you don't care what you lose!
— Jasleen Kaur Gumber
Let the love of the moon kiss you good night, let the morning sun wake you up with loving light.
— Debasish Mridha
Not all doors open in the same direction and with the same effort!
— Jasleen Kaur Gumber
UNDIVIDEDI am for One world undivided. One world without fear and corruption. One world ruled by Truth and Justice. I am forOne peaceful world for all,Where hate has been overcome by love,And everyone is guided only By their conscience.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
What would have become of Hercules do you think if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar - and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges? Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules. And even if he had, what good would it have done him? What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir into him action?
— Epictetus, The Discourses
The development of man's intellectual capacities has far outstripped the development of his emotions. Man's brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself.
— Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom
Each sunrise brings a new day filled with new hopes for a new beginning.
— Debasish Mridha
La memoria es como libro en el cual se escribe toda nuestra vida. Algunas veces deseamos cerrarlo y olvidarlo para no recordar todos los escabrosos detalles, y otras veces deseamos abrirlo y observarlo detenidamente, queriendo volver a sentir lo mismo que sentimos en aquel momento.
— Audrey Dry, Sin mirar atrás
I’d like to be the moon in your sky.
— Debasish Mridha
Maybe I should have gone into politics. If you were a political activist, election season brought moments of intensity, whichever side you were on, and meanwhile here I was inarguably withering away,
— Michel Houellebecq
In the summer, we write life’s summary with the slow waves of love flowing over the sandy beach. The slow breeze and the warm sun write our memories.
— Debasish Mridha
Results are always hidden in thoughts and actions.
— Debasish Mridha M.D.
How many of us have lately taken the time out to look at the sky; marvel at the clouds; smell the flowers; or smelt the fresh scent of rain; bought a stranger a cup of tea or coffee; given our time to help another; or just taken time out to sit and watch people rush hither and tither; said "I love you"; smiled at a complete stranger; joined in with kids from the street to play a game?Sadly, I would have to say....not many.It's sad....
— Anthony T. Hincks
Bloom as if you want to make the whole world beautiful.
— Debasish Mridha
The only thing that interests the physicist is finding out on what assumptions a framework of things can be constructed which will enable us to know how to use them mechanically. Physics, as I have said on another occasion, is the technique of techniques and the ars combinatoria for fabricating machines. It is a knowledge which has scarcely anything to do with comprehension.
— José Ortega y Gasset
So that others can live in peace, talk about love and peace wherever you go.
— Debasish Mridha
Y, entonces, en ese instante que tan solo dura un segundo, el cerebro se encarga de abrir la cerradura del cofre en el cual guardas todo lo que aprecias. Cede de tal manera que la tapa se abre y todo lo que hay en el interior sale de forma tan rápida y tan fugaz que no puedes detenerlo.
— Audrey Dry, Sin mirar atrás
Ama bardağımın dibinde biram ılıksa, aynada koyu renkli lekeler varsa, fazlalıksam; en içten ve en katışıksız acım, ayıbalığı gibi, hem bir yığın et hem gepgeniş bir deriyle ve insanın içine dokunan ıslak, ama kötülük dolu gözlerle sürüklenip hantallaşıyorsa bu benim kabahatim mi?
— Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
Philosophy is like wine. There are good years and bad years but, in general, the older the better.
— Eric    Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley
It is possible that these millions of suns, along with thousands of millions more we cannot see, make up altogether but a globule of blood or lymph in the veins of an animal, of a minute insect, hatched in a world of whose vastness we can frame no conception, but which nevertheless would itself, in proportion to some other world, be no more than a speck of dust.
— Anatole France, The Garden of Epicurus
If one million of you give assent to the one thousand who participate in the murder of a child, then one million of you are a million times guilty.
— Compton Gage
No crime is a means to an end. No crime can be rationalized.
— Compton Gage
There's a kind of saying that you don't understand its meaning, 'I don't believe it. It's too crazy. I'm not going to accept it.'… You'll have to accept it. It's the way nature works. If you want to know how nature works, we looked at it, carefully. Looking at it, that's the way it looks. You don't like it? Go somewhere else, to another universe where the rules are simpler, philosophically more pleasing, more psychologically easy. I can't help it, okay? If I'm going to tell you honestly what the world looks like to the human beings who have struggled as hard as they can to understand it, I can only tell you what it looks like.
— Richard Feynman
If one thousand of you participate in the murder of one child, then one thousand of you are a thousand times guilty.
— Compton Gage
All that man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. His suffering and happiness are evolved from within. As he thinks, so he is. As he continues to think, so he remains.
— James Allen, As a Man Thinketh
It is not what we have that matters
—  what matters is what we give away with love.
Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?
— Diogenes of Sinope
What's the use of complaining about something you have no intentions of changing it?
— Mario L Castellanos
The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
— Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
In meetings philosophy might work,on the field practicality works.
— Amit Kalantri
The freedom of an unscheduled afternoon brought confusion rather than joy. Julius had always been focused. When he was not seeing patients, other important projects and activities-writing, teaching, tennis, research-clamored for his attention. But today nothing seemed important. He suspected that nothing had ever been important, that his mind had arbitrarily imbued projects with importance and then cunningly covered its traces. Today he saw through the ruse of a lifetime. Today there was nothing important to do, and he ambled aimlessly down Union Street.
— Irvin D. Yalom, The Schopenhauer Cure
To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.
— Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion
Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy, and make the most of where you are
— Germany Kent
To be incapable of taking one’s enemies, one’s accidents, even one’s misdeeds seriously for very long - that is the sign of strong full natures in whom there is an excess of power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget. Mirabeau had no memory for insults and vile actions done to him and was unable to forgive simply because he - forgot. Such a man shakes off with a single shrug the many vermin that eat deep into others.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Stand in the divine rain, and seeds of wisdom will grow in your soul.
— Peter Kreeft
Be in limits, life will never limit you.
— M.H. Rakib, The Cavalier
It’s an already inside outside,The philosophers say it’s the soulBut it’s not the soul: it’s the animal or the man itselfIn its way of existing.
— Alberto Caeiro, The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro
The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Portable Emerson
A true philosopher must never give up.
— Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
Which do you think is more valuable to humanity?a. Finding ways to tell humans that they have free will despite the incontrovertible fact that their actions are completely dictated by the laws of physics as instantiated in our bodies, brains and environments? That is, engaging in the honored philosophical practice of showing that our notion of "free will" can be compatible with determinism?orb. Telling people, based on our scientific knowledge of physics, neurology, and behavior, that our actions are predetermined rather than dictated by some ghost in our brains, and then sussing out the consequences of that conclusion and applying them to society?Of course my answer is b).
— Jerry A. Coyne
I tell you as well as myself: what we see with our own eyes is nothing other than a cloud concealing what we should perceive with our inner sight, while what we listen to with our ears is merely a ringing sound disturbing what we should understand with our hearts. When we see a man being taken to prion by a police officer let us not hasten to assume he is a wrong-doer. When we see a corpse, and a man standing beside it with bloodstained hands, let us not conclude that this is a victim and his assassin. When we hear one man singing and another lamenting, let us ascertain which one of the two is truly happy.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being.
— D.H. Lawrence, Selected Essays
Not all of Derrida's writing is to everyone's taste. He had an irritating habit of overusing the rhetorical question, which lends itself easily to parody: 'What is it, to speak? How can I even speak of this? Who is this "I" who speaks of speaking?
— Terry Eagleton
Allaah subhanahuu, rejects those who refused Allaah’s Shareeah; the laws that are good for the Muslims; the laws that forbid what is evil. Allaah rejects those who follow laws of personal desires and who adopt laws of Kufr such as the laws enforced by the Tartars who were under the control of Gengiz Khan, their king. These laws were﻿ a mixture of Judaism, Christianity and laws chosen by their king that suited his desires. Should we prefer these laws to the Sharee`ah of Allaah and His Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam)?
— Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibnu Katsir
The certainty about the uncertain (in view to life) is that it will remain uncertain till the time its certain.
— Mayank  Sharma, A Cocktail of Love
Some way some how i'm going to be happy i'm going to laugh i'm going to prosper,i feel good that i remain positive thru these mess up times!!!
— jojo1980
Herein lies the supreme wisdom, human and divine; and the task of philosophy consists in teaching men to submit joyously to Necessity which hears nothing and is indifferent to all.
— Lev Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem
The only successful philosophies and religions are the ones that flatter us, whether in the name of progress or of hell. Damned or not, man experiences an absolute need to be at the heart of everything.
— Emil M. Cioran
In short, philosophical theories are largely the product of the hidden hand of the cognitive unconscious.
— George Lakoff
His conception of the universe is, however, instinctive, not intellectual; it can't be criticized as a concept, because there’s none there, and it can't be criticized as temperament, because temperament can't be criticized.
— Álvaro de Campos
If one knew the truth how could there be freedom? If hell and paradise were in the middle of the marketplace, everyone would be a saint.
— Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.
— David Starr Jordan
It’s the poet we love in Caeiro, not the philosopher. What we really get from these poems is a childlike sense of life, with all the direct materiality of the child’s mind, and all the vital spirituality of hope and increase that exist in the body and soul of nescient childhood. Caeiro’s work is a dawn that wakes us up and quickens us; a more that material, more than anti-spiritual dawn. It’s an abstract effect, pure vacuum, nothingness.
— Álvaro de Campos
Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy.
— Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalistic—in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much I might change in the future. Just as one wouldn’t draw a lasting conclusion about oneself on the basis of a brief experience of indigestion, one needn’t do so on the basis of how one has thought or behaved for vast stretches of time in the past. A creative change of inputs to the system—learning new skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention—may radically transform one’s life.
— Sam Harris, Free Will
It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort...only to find a big bear hug coming his way.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
The way you see people is the way you treat them and the way you treat them is what they become.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In essence I find that the foundation of modern conservatism is driven by a clinging to God in fear of the world, whereas the foundation of modern liberalism is a clinging to the world in fear of God; albeit, the true foundation should be one's clinging to God in fear of God.
— Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile
As far as I am concerned, philosophic questioning is just as likely to make you confused and depressed as it is to improve your condition.
— Christopher Paolini, Brisingr
You will never know how high you can climb until you reach the top.
— K.L. Toth
We are the sum total of the decisions we have made.
— E.A. Bucchianeri
That’s the thing about love It can take you up to the mountaintop and can drop you And the impact will either kill you or make you a new person
— Kehinde Sonola, Klosophy
The lesson we are indebted to Egypt for, our future generations learned that in the face of oppression silence is never golden.
— Aysha Taryam, The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries
Popular medicine and popular morality belong together and ought not to be evaluated so differently as they still are: both are the most dangerous pseudo-sciences.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality
Hatred is a form of faith, distilled by passion to remove all rationality.
— L.E. Modesitt Jr., The Elysium Commission
After some cogitation, it is difficult not to agree with Herman Bondi (1919 - 2005), who in his book 'Relativity and Common Sense' says:... The surprising thing, surely, is that molecules in a gas behave so much as billiard balls, not that electrons behave so little like billiard balls.
— Felix Alba-Juez, E=mc^2: The Most Famous Equation in History... and its Folklore
Instinct is a makeshift, an admission of helplessness before the problem of reality.
— Leo Frobenius, Kulturgeschichte Afrikas
If Relativity Theory kills our deepest convictions, why not start by finding out why we believed in them for millennia?
— Felix Alba-Juez, Galloping with Light - Einstein, Relativity, and Folklore
Democracy should always be viewed with a philosophical perspective rather than a political one, because after all democracy was born to a philosopher and murdered by a politician.
— Aysha Taryam, The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries
Teaching the layperson (divulgare) is not distorting (tergiversare) the subject, but educating the public; and it is our duty as scientists to educate without distorting the essence of the scientific knowledge attained by humanity. The future of our society depends upon this premise.
— Felix Alba-Juez, Galloping with Light - Einstein, Relativity, and Folklore
‎"...θα πρέπει να αντιληφθείς, αγαπητή Τερέζα, ότι τα αντικείμενα δεν έχουν, κατά την άποψη μας, άλλη αξία από εκείνη που τους δίνει η φαντασία μας
— Marquis de Sade, Justine
I prefer for 'my world' to have the highest certification of being a faithful representation of the exterior world.
— Jesus Zamora Bonilla, Galloping with Light - Einstein, Relativity, and Folklore
In politics, the pen is at its heaviest because it is weighed down by the collective responsibility it holds towards its people and their future in the eyes of the world.
— Aysha Taryam, The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries
Philosophy is the critically reflective, systematically articulated attempt to illumine our human experience in depth and set it in a vision of the whole.
— W. Norris Clarke, The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics
Sin is a gravitation.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Without causality in the world, there is no point in educating people, or making any moral or political appeal.
— Felix Alba-Juez, The Perception of Time... and its Measurement
Animals are irrational men
— Safir Kassim Booudjelal
Δύο υπερβολές : ν' αποκλείουμε το Λόγο, και να μη δεχόμαστε παρά μόνο το Λόγο.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées
You can't always be right, but you can be wrong a lot less
— Benny Bellamacina, Philosophical Uplifting Quotes and Poems
Il pessimismo radicale sconfina nell'ottimismo.
— Guido Morselli, Dissipatio H.G.
Тогава си счел всички земни придобивки за нищо. И сега недей да милееш за нищо. Имай готовност, като захвърлиш всичко, да останеш гол.
— Феофан Затворник, Путь ко спасению. Краткий очерк аскетики.
#quote In the harshest conditions is when we know better the people around us. En las condiciones más duras es cuando conocemos mejor a las personas que nos rodean.
— Juan Luis Ortiz Hidalgo, Las mil vidas del profesor Bonham
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which a man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of human is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for the brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way-an honorable way-in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words,"The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.
— Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning
Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
— Alan W. Watts
In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, "The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language." What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!
— Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
I only seem negative to the fortunate. That's because I show the less fortunate that they aren't less fortunate after all.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
I have a sickness doctors can't cure,Inexorably pulling me to the well of my destruction,Consented to be a sacrifice, killed for her love,Eager, like the drunk gulping wine mixed with poison,Shameless were those my nights,Yet my soul loved them beyond all passion.
— Ibn Hazm Al-Andalusi, طوق الحمامة في الألفة والألاف
To live in any true sense of the word is to reject others; to accept them, one must be able to renounce, to do oneself violence, to act against one's own nature, to weaken oneself; we conceive freedom only for ourselves - we extend it to our neighbours only at the cost of exhausting efforts; whence the precariousness of liberalism, a defiance of our instincts, a brief and miraculous success, a state of exception, at the antipodes of our deepest imperatives.
— Emil M. Cioran, History and Utopia
No one else can want for me. No one can substitute his act of will for mine. It does sometimes happen that someone very much wants me to want what he wants. This is the moment when the impassable frontier between him and me, which is drawn by free will, becomes most obvious. I may not want that which he wants me to want - and in this precisely I am incommunicabilis. I am, and I must be, independent in my actions. All human relationships are posited on this fact.
— John Paul II, Love and Responsibility
Formation may be the best name for what happens in a circle of trust, because the word refers, historically, to soul work done in community. But a quick disclaimer is in order, since formation sometimes means a process quite contrary to the one described in this book----a process in which the pressure of orthodox doctrine, sacred text, and institutional authority is applied to the misshapen soul in order to conform it to the shape dictated by some theology. This approach is rooted in the idea that we are born with souls deformed by sin, and our situation is hopeless until the authorities "form" us properly. But all of that is turned upside down by the principles of a circle of trust: I applaud the theologian who said that "the idea of humans being born alienated from the Creator would seem an abominable concept." Here formation flows from the belief that we are born with souls in perfect form. As time goes on, we subject to powers of deformation, from within as well as without, that twist us into shapes alien to the shape of the soul. But the soul never loses its original form and never stops calling us back to our birhtright integrity.
— Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life
A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.
— Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays
Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocfence leads her to make a poor choice - the very worst - but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck - all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong.
— Robert Rowland Smith, Breakfast with Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day
Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how thespirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen. Der Mensch ist Etwas, das überwunden werden soll. Was habt ihr gethan, ihn zu überwinden? Was ist der Affe für en Menschen? Ein Gelächter oder eine schmerzliche Scham. Und ebendas soll der Mensch für den Übermenschen sein: ein Gelächter oder eine schmerzliche Scham. Ihr habt den Weg vom Wurme zum Menschen gemacht, und Vieles ist in euch noch Wurm. Einst wart ihr Affen, und auch jetzt ist der Mensch mehr Affe, als irgend ein Affe.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
they Whatever can make life truly happy is absolutely good in its own right because it cannot be warped into evil From whence then comes error In that while all men wish for a happy life they mistake the means for the thing itself and while they fancy themselves in pursuit of it they are flying from it for when the sum of happiness consists in solid tranquillity and an unembarrassed confidence therein they are ever collecting causes of disquiet and not only carry burthens but drag them painfully along through the rugged and deceitful path of life so that they still withdraw themselves from the good effect proposed the more pains they take the more business they have upon their hands instead of advancing they are retrograde and as it happens in a labyrinth their very speed puzzles and confounds them
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The onlooker who doesn’t know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been achieved.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
We attribute to ourselves qualities that we do not possess because if we possessed them, our lives would exactly mirror our image of ourselves. Our lies about what is really happening in our lives are what we use to "patch up" our ego with rationalizations and justifications, all of which conceal from us the fact that we cannot really do anything because we have no Being.
— Laura Knight Jadczyk, The Secret History of the World and How to Get Out Alive
Admittedly, art is somewhat like spit. It does not repulse or even worry is while it is still inside of us, but once it exits our body, it becomes disgusting.
— Ivan Brunetti
Mendel had a remarkable nature as a boy. I’m not talking about miracles. Miracles are a burden for a tzaddik, not the proof of one. Miracles prove nothing except to those whose faith is bought very cheap, sir. There was something in Mendele. There was a fire.
— Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen's Union
we deceive ourselves in thinking that death only follows life whereas it both goes before and will follow after it for where is the difference in not beginning or ceasing to exist the effect of both is not to be
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
Latter-day capitalism. Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match. Like pulling on a Missoni sweater over Trussardi slacks and Pollini shoes, you can now enjoy hybrid styles of morality. It's the way of the world -- philosophy starting to look more and more like business administration.
— Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
Consider the whole world reconnoitre individuals j who is there whose life is not taken up with providing for to morrow Do you ask what harm there is in this An infinite deal for such men do not live but are about to live they defer every thing from day to day however circumspect we are life will still outrun us.
— Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
So many other planets & stars -- could all those stars set over barren planets, beauty wasted? Or, are sunsets witnessed throughout the universe?
— David Self
It must not be forgotten that reason too needs to be sustained in all its searching by trusting dialogue and sincere friendship. A climate of suspicion and distrust, which can beset speculative research, ignores the teaching of the ancient philosophers who proposed friendship as one of the most appropriate contexts for sound philosophical enquiry.
— John Paul II, Fides et Ratio: On the Relationship Between Faith and Reason
I think, therefore a single fertilized egg cell can replicate itself into trillions of specialized and exquisitely organized cells.
— David Self
Съвестта е онзи глас Божий в нас, онова огледало, в което ние се оглеждаме и виждаме своите недостатъци.
— Схиархимандрит Касиан
И на съвършените съвършенството е несъвършено. Св. Иоан Лествичник
— Никодим Святогорец, Невидимая брань
…questioning the existence of God may begin because of one’s sense of disappointment rather than because of a line of reasoning. Disappointment can bring disillusionment, and disillusionment can get quite a grip on us. It may be the case that, next to the grip of disillusionment, whatever reasons we can think of to believe that God exists or that God is good will appear weak. So sometimes the reason we do not believe or the reason we stop believing is not the intellectual challenge to believing in God. Sometimes, the grip of disillusionment cannot be matched by things that seem to be only abstract or theoretical.
— Gregory E. Ganssle, Thinking about God: First Steps in Philosophy
Nu mai trăim un prezent placid, ci suntem prinși cu toții în efortul de a ne pregăti permanent pentru viitor.
— Jean-Claude Carrière, Nu sperați că veți scăpa de cărți
Плътта, ако крепне, крепне за сметка на духа; и духът, ако съзрява, то ене по друг начин, а за сметка на упокояването на плътта.
— Феофан Затворник, Путь ко спасению. Краткий очерк аскетики.
LORD ILLINGWORTH: The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.MRS ALLONBY: And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance
Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is.
— Rose Wilder Lane
... the most important concept ever put forth was that matter, ALL matter, with no exceptions from stone to star to starfish to student to sovereign, is as divine as all else in the cosmos, for all flows from Consciousness, the Word that came before the World - and all, in time, will flow back.
— Ki Longfellow, Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria
Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They've given up all for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes."Waddington reflected for a little while. "I wonder if it matters what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books the write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
The present convergence of crises––in money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, the environment, and more––is a birth crisis, expelling us from the old world into a new.
— Charles Eisenstein, Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
Part of being of a true existentialist is wanting to be what we make ourselves be by the way we choose to act, as opposed to making excuses for the way we act and regretting it.
— Gary Cox, How to Be an Existentialist: or How to Get Real, Get a Grip and Stop Making Excuses
It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death-- ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.
— James     Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
It's harder to make the glass than break the glass.
— The RZA, The Tao of Wu
If you could disagree with kings, were gods so far above?
— Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts
Honor has not to be won
—  it must only not be lost.