| Quotes, from various Sources. More will be added periodically, and eventually I will organize the quotes according to topic, author, etc |
| "The fool the persists in his folly becomes wise" --unknown "Be a man and do not follow me but yourself" --Nietzsche "If you are not programming your own trip, who is?" --Robert A. Wilson (see this for more) "Nothing Says 'I love you' like a good piece of meat" --David Letterman "While we are talking, jealous time has fled. So seize the day, and put no trust in tomorrow" --Horace "Freedom is not opposed to necessity or determinism; it is only opposed to an alien necessity or alien determinism" ... "The greatest obstacle man has to contend against is his emotional nature" ... "The most spiritual forms of human love have the same emotional foundations as the most bestial forms of human lust." ... "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can either be or be conceived without God." --Spinoza "Lots of people let themselves be wholly absorbed by militant politics and the preparation for social revolution. Rare, much more rare, are they who, in order to prepare for the revolution, are willing to make themselves worthy of it." --Georges Friedmann "Those who tacitly overlook such things as spitting on the stairs or leaving a yard or house looking like a pigsty are poor citizens and unworthy builders of the new society" --Leon Trotsky "He who has no will of his own always does what he wishes. For since he has no will of his own, everything that happens satisfies him. He finds himself doing as he wills all the time, for he does not want things to be as he wills them, but he wills that they be just as they are" --Dorotheus of Gaza (cf. Epictetus) "The cry of the flesh is; not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold. Whoever has these things, and hopes to keep on having them, can rival in happiness with Zeus himself." --attributed to Epicurus "The pleasure of one instant of existence is just as total and complete as a pleasure of infinite duration, and man is just as immortal as God, because death is not part of life" --Pierre Hadot, speaking 'Epicureanly' On the difference between Epicureanism and Stoicism: "The difference between the two attitudes consists only in the fact that the Epicurean enjoys the present moment, whereas the Stoic wills it intensely; for one, it is a pleasure; for the other, a duty." --Pierre Hadot "One must not let oneself be deceived by the word 'deception.' One can deceive a person for the truth's sake, and (to recall old Socrates) one can deceive a person into the truth. Indeed, it is only by this means, i.e., by deceiving them, that it is possible to bring into the truth one who is in an illusion" --Soren Kierkegaard "Let reason be present everywhere where life rejoices in life" --Goethe "A man becomes more and more a free and responsible agent the more he at all times knows what he is doing." "Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives. Theology is a game whose object is to bring rules into the subjective." "A man's interests direct his perceptions and his perception pick out the facts that are relevant to his interests." "As self-consciousness is a necessary prelude to greater freedom of will, so it is also a necessary prelude to a greater freedom of thought." --Stuart Hampshire "You are not authoritative about what is happening in you, but only about what seems to be happening in you." --Daniel C. Dennett "The elucidation of immediate experience is the sole justification for any thought." "The imperfection of the world is the theme of every religion which offers a way of escape, and of every sceptic who deplores the prevailing superstition." "Love neither rules, nor is unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate present." "...progres is always a transcendence of what is obvious." --Alfred North Whitehead When asked by Phaedrus, if he believes in the myth of Boreus seizing Orithyia from the river bank, Socrates replies thus: "I can't as yet 'know myself,' as the inscription at Delphi enjoins, and so long as that ignorance remains it seems to me rediculous to inquire into extraneous matters." --Plato, Phaedrus (230a) Concerning Kant's metaphysics: "However, this appearance of absolute opposition may be mere appearance, due to different modes of apprehension. Through what is sometimes called our 'inner sense,' we know our minds as they are in themselves. And what we know thereby is that they are something for themselves (which is the basis for the ethic of treating all other people as ends in themselves). Through our 'outer senses,' however, we are knowing not ourselves but other things. we are, therefore, not knowing them from within, by identity, but from without. We are knowing them as they appear to us from without. Not only that, we do not even know them from without directly, but indirectly, through a very complicated bodily sensory system.... Accordingly, we need not assume that our purely spatial and externalistic conceptions of these objects exhaust what they are in themselves. In particular, we need not assume that they are devoid of internal duration" again... "On the assumption that my own experience is one actuality among others, no different in kind from others, my self-knowledge gives me an inside viewpoint on the nature of nature" and... "All things other than our own experience appear to be mere objects, rather than subjects, because by the time they can be prehended they are objects; their subjectivity has perished.... So, we are right to think that everything that we perceive is an object--in the ontological as well as epistemic sense of the term. we are only wrong to think of them as mere objects." --David Ray Griffin "Clear, conscious discrimination is an accident of human existence. It makes us human. But it does not make us exist. It is of the essence of our humanity. But it is an accident of our existence." --Whitehead "The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty." --Stephen Hawking "Pray, n: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy." --Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) "The internet, of course, is more than just a place to find pictures of people having sex with dogs." -- Time, 3 July 1995 "A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order wil deserve neither and lose both." --Benjamin Franklin "Teach a man to make fire, and he will be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life." --John A. Hraster "He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice." --Albert Einstein "I'm realizing that happiness is so much easier than all the things I've been led to believe will bring it to me." --Michael McConnell "When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself." --Peter O'Toole "Without faith, one thoroughly flees from not thinking" --Heraclitus "The inspiration of the Bible depends on the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it." --Robert Ingersoll When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. --Benjamin Franklin from a letter to Richard Price October 9, 1790 |