Best 2580 quotes in «philosophical quotes» category

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature

Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good.

Government has no other end, but the preservation of property.

Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.

Good evening, Lord Corwin,' said the lean, cadaverous figure who rested against a storage rack, smoking his pipe, grinning around it. Good evening, Roger. How are things in the nether world?' A rat, a bat, a spider. Nothing much else astir. Peaceful.' You enjoy this duty?' He nodded. I am writing a philosophical romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity. I work on those parts down here.

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

Grant what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt.

Hamlet and Victor Frankenstein are each obsessed with death. Hamlet's whole story is a philosophical preparation for death; Victor's is an intellectual refusal to accept it.

Happiness lies outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one's goal, not self-absorption. The male, capable of only the latter, makes a virtue of an irremediable fault and sets up self-absorption, not only as a good but as a Philosophical Good.

Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preachments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race. Confucius cares not for the poverty, squalor and misery of the people of China. Buddha remains undisturbed in his philosophical indifference to the famine and starvation of outraged Hindoos; Jahve continues deaf to the bitter cry of Israel; while Jesus refuses to rise from the dead against his Christians who are butchering each other.

Happy the man who has been able to learn the causes of things.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

He enters the port with a full sail.

Have you ever seen a demonstrable example of equality in your entire life? Can it be glimpsed in any dog show or classroom? In any ping pong game or chess match? Of course not. It is a philosophical abstraction, something nowhere to be found in nature.

He that is kind is free, though he is a slave; he that is evil is a slave, though he be a king.

He is a drunkard who takes more than three glasses though he be not drunk.

Heterosexuality is a die-hard custom through which male-supremacist institutions insure their own perpetuity and control over us. Women are kept, maintained and contained through terror, violence, and the spray of semen...[Lesbianism is] an ideological, political and philosophical means of liberation of all women from heterosexual tyranny.

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

He that is jealous is not in love.

He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.

He who has great power should use it lightly.

He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

he who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors

Highly technical philosophical arguments of the sort many philosophers favor are absent here. That is because I have a prior problem to deal with. I have learned that arguments, no matter how watertight, often fall on deaf ears. I am myself the author of arguments that I consider rigorous and unanswerable but that are often not such much rebutted or even dismissed as simply ignored.

He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.

However much I may like to talk about or be interested in a more philosophical or moral agenda, [film] is, ultimately, about narrative. And it's about telling stories that are engaging and dramatic.

However much the creationist leaders might hammer away at their scientific and philosophical points, they would be helpless and a laughing-stock if that were all they had. It is religion that recruits their squadrons. Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for - of even against - evolution, march in the army of the night, their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.

Homeric mind is ingenuity, practical intelligence. There is no Rodin-like deep thinking, no mathematical or philosophical speculation. Odysseus thinks with his hands.

How then did we come to the "standard model"? And how has it supplanted other theories, like the steady state model? It is a tribute to the essential objectivity of modern astrophysics that this consensus has been brought about, not by shifts in philosophical preference or by the influence of astrophysical mandarins, but by the pressure of empirical data.

How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

Hug the shore; let others try the deep.

Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.

I always know a lie when I hear it, and the effect it has on me is no good at all. I go berserk just forcing myself not to go berserk, just trying to see truth in the lie, to see it in full context, and in a dimension in which it has got to be more than just a lie, possibly the profoundest kind of truth.

Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason.

I am also very excited by the way in which we can see Paul wrestling not only with his Jewish world and its scriptures but also, by clear implication, with philosophical and political issues that were 'out there' at the time. The thing is that for Paul this is all part of the same larger, whole vision of God and God's purposes. Watching how everything comes together is an intellectual treat of the first order - as well as a spiritual and practical challenge to me personally and to the church.

I am not ashamed to admit that I belong to those who fantasize that literature is capable of bringing new horizons and new perspectives--philosophical, religious, aesthetical and even social.

I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.

I also ask you my friends not to condemn me entirely to the mill of mathematical calculations, and allow me time for philosophical speculations, my only pleasures.

I am absolutely sick unto death of hearing people say - they all say this; it must be Item One on the curriculum in Trend College - "I just hate to talk to a machine!" They say this as though it is a major philosophical position, as opposed to a description of a minor neurosis. My feeling is, if you have a problem like this, you shouldn't go around trumpeting it; you should stay home and practice talking to a machine you can feel comfortable with, such as your Water Pik, until you are ready to assume your place in modern society.

I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs.

I am not certain of the hereafter. Frankly, I'm not all that certain of the here.

I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga.

I believe that my art gets across the point that I'm in this morality theater trying to help the underdog, and I'm speaking socially here, showing concern and making psychological and philosophical statements for the underdog.