Philosophy quotes (read first post)

Gary L

Thought this would be fun if it works. Try to keep it to one quote per post and if possible make it a response to the previous quote. If someone with the godlike power of a moderator wants to keep it clean it couldn't hurt.

"Philosophy, as I have thus far understood and lived it, is a voluntary living among ice and high mountains. A seeking out of everything strange and questionable in existence, everything thus far placed under a ban by morality." Nietzsche

P.s; It doesn't have to be a quote about philosophy, that was just a coincidence.

Torakx

“Without injustices, the name of justice would mean what?”
― Heraclitus, Fragments



A nod toward duality in repsonse to the above post.
I think Philosophy is the whole of "both" parts. That is the flies in the market and the cave in the mountains. Without one the other has only one dimension.

I couldn't find another qoute on duality Best I could do.

MRnotlob606

It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of the bad. Arthur Schopenhauer

Gary L

Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were. Proust

GCU Flexible Demeanour

<...> no-one reveals himself as he is; we all wear a mask, and play a role.

Schopenhauer (Again!)

Torakx

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

-Nietzsche

kerry4sam

“Maybe you had to be dying to finally get to do what you wanted.

I fidgeted around with the puzzle pieces for a while longer, but I wasn't lucky. Nothing seemed to fit without a whole lot of work.

Then I had this thought: What if it was enough to realize that you would die someday, that none of this would go on forever? Would that be enough?”

Carol Rifka Brunt

Gary L

I know what’s coming you see. I know no one beats these odds. And I know it’s a matter of getting used to that and realizing that you are expelled from your mother’s uterus as if shot from a cannon, towards a barn door studded with old nail files and rusty hooks. It’s a matter of how you use up the intervening time in an intelligent and ironic way; and try not to do anything ghastly to your fellow creatures. Hitchens

Roquentin

“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.” Franz Kafka

conorh91

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing – as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.—Jean Paul Sartre, from the Existentialism Is a Humanism lectures

Joe1919

To live according to human nature is to have an imaginative grasp of possibilities for one's life as well as an accurate picture of its realities. (Robin Lovin)

Roquentin

“They say that we are better educated than our parents' generation. What they mean is that we go to school longer. It is not the same thing.” Richard Yates

Not really philosophy, but a great quote anyhow

Gary L

“As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the 'sacredness of human life' remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains.” Trotsky

Roquentin

"My fear is my substance and probably the best part of me." Franz Kafka

Gary L

That which is so astonishing in the religious life of the ancient Greeks is the irrestrainable stream of GRATITUDE which it pours forth—it is a very superior kind of man who takes SUCH an attitude towards nature and life.—Later on, when the populace got the upper hand in Greece, FEAR became rampant also in religion; and Christianity was preparing itself. Nietzsche.

Kakidd

“Superstitious." What a strange word. If you believed in Christianity or Islam, it was called "faith". But if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was superstition! Who had the right to call other people's belief superstition?”
― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World

Gary L

A cult is a religion with no political power. No Idea.

Baked.noodle

“There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide” The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus (1913–1960).

Gary L

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy. Wittgenstein

Torakx

"I do not trust a man who does not admit that he is a murderer within."- Friedrich Nietzsche

shanered

"To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect."
Oscar Wilde

Black Swan

shanered wrote: »

"To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect."
Oscar Wilde

Thus emerges such thoughts as chaos, randomness, outliers, and serendipitous findings that allow us to create, and break with the boredom of day-to-day living.

Gary L

The doctor sees mankind in all its weakness; the lawyer in all its wickedness; the theologian in all its stupidity. Schopenhauer

Deranged96

"When you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you"
- Nietzsche

HobbyMan

I know that I must now lead the sympathizing and attentive friend to an elevated position of lonesome contemplation, where he will have but few companions, and I call out encouragingly to him that we must hold fast to our shining guides, the Greeks - Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy)

Gary L

Psychologists should bethink themselves before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to DISCHARGE its strength—life itself is WILL TO POWER. Nietzsche again!

MRnotlob606

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
Jean-Paul Sartre

RichieO

I believe we are here to help 'others', what the 'others' are here for, I have no idea....

I don't remember who quoted it, but seemed funny to me....

fjollybxo

I am because we are

robindch

Excerpts from Philosophers’ Breakup Letters Throughout History

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/excerpts-from-philosophers-breakup-letters-throughout-history

New Yorker wrote:

For our entire relationship, I was absolutely and irrevocably miserable. I can see now that you used me purely as a means to an end. Don’t you know how that makes me feel? It is imperative that you reflect on the meaning of universal law, and stop doing that thing you did with your tongue. I hated that.—Immanuel Kant

What are we even doing anymore? With every passing day, you grow more isolated from your labor. We have not made love in over a month, even after I was cured of that rash, and was so certain that we would celebrate appropriately. I demand justice from this bourgeois hand-job hell they call “relationships.”—Karl Marx

Do you remember that day with the ducks? It was cold and rainy and the foreboding sky tried to seal our fate with each gust of wind. We hurried underneath the nearest awning, where we came upon a family of ducks nestled together, and I remember looking at you and thinking,
 “This can’t last long.” But what ever does? Listen to me when I say that just as a bee abandons its flower once pollination is complete, you too must move onward, or go under. One day soon you will meet a man, and he will rise like a phoenix from the ashes, and it is my greatest hope that he will not give you syphilis.—Friedrich Nietzsche

It pains me to admit it, but Socrates was right about you. You are incapable of thinking about anyone but yourself. When was the last time you even came to see me lecture at the Academy? I have been lost in a state of denial for long enough. Now I finally realize that your love is not true. Your beauty is transcendent, yes, but painfully abstract. Leave me to grapple with the material world. Be gone.—Plato

I drink, therefore I am . . . drunk. Ha ha! I thought this would be easier after my sixth glass of wine, but alas, it is still absolutely terrible. Oh, how my world grows smaller when I think of you not in it, and—no, you know what? Let me start over. Philosophy is like a tree, and it has all these branches that extend outward, but you’re like a shrub. Cute and small, but not well versed in rationalist thought. Do you get what I’m trying to say?—René Descartes

My dear little girl, I visited the Balzac exhibit the other day and immediately knew what had to be done. I am terribly in love with you, and yet I despise you. Try to understand: I think of you in those small, delicate moments, like when a squirrel hurries across the allée or a homeless man pleasures himself in the bushes of les Tuileries. It might be time that you find someone else who shares your interest in morally evolved threesomes.—Jean-Paul Sartre

J.P., you are an ass.—Simone de Beauvoir

I will proceed to break down our relationship into three stages. Our first stage is defined by aesthetics. I walked down one of my favorite crooked streets in Copenhagen, watched you step out of a carriage, and knew I must have you. The second stage of our existence is an ethical one. While I desired to lay my eyes on your hidden flesh, I recognized that you had recently revealed your body and soul to my good friend Hans, and knew he would be pissed if I tried anything. Our third and final stage is religious. I did not care much for Hans, and so I seduced you. However, we have both committed a tremendous sin, and thus we must end this immoral though titillating tryst immediately. God bless.—Søren Kierkegaard

Deranged96

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo"
H.G. Wells