Quotessence
Home / Authors / Neel Burton
Neel Burton

Neel Burton Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllPhilosophyEmotionsPsychologyWineSelf DeceptionWisdomExistentialismLonelinessMenVirtueCognitionEthicsPsychoanalysisSolitudeCultureEducationEmotional IntelligenceFailureHumourMeaning

Famous Neel Burton Quotes

“The disease of the soul is both more common and more deadly than the disease of the body. Just as medicine is the art devoted to healing the body, so philosophy is the art devoted to healing the soul, curing it of improper emotions, false beliefs, and faulty judgments, which are the causes of so much hardship and handicap. To heal the body one turns to the practitioner of the art of healing the body, but to heal the soul there is no doctor to turn to, and each of us is left to become that doctor unto himself. Yet, this need not stop us from exhorting others to imitate us in the godly art, in the forlorn hope that they might transform themselves into better citizens for Athens and better companions for us.”

PhilosophyMedicine
Book:Plato: Letters to my Son
Create image

“Poor feeling hijacks thinking for self-deception: to hide harsh truths, avoid action, evade responsibility, and, as the existentialists might put it, flee from freedom. Thus, poor feeling is a kind of moral failing, indeed, the deepest kind, and virtue principally consists in correcting and refining our emotions and the values that they reflect. To feel the right thing is to do the right thing, without any particular need for conscious thought or effort.”

ReasonPhilosophyEmotionsEthicsExistentialismEmotional IntelligencePsychoanalysisSelf DeceptionCognition
Book:Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions
Create image

“Ultimately, whether myth is religion or folk tale is, and always has been, a question of faith. When Europeans encountered the narratives of the peoples they colonized, they dismissed them as ‘myths’—whence the modern, pejorative sense of ‘myth’ as ‘fiction’ or ‘falsehood’—but their own Garden of Eden, Holy Trinity, and Easter Resurrection they regarded instead as theology.”

PhilosophyMythology
Book:The Meaning of Myth: With 12 Greek Myths Retold and Interpreted by a Psychiatrist
Create image

“While ants and bees, and perhaps even wolves, may be more social than human beings, we are by far the most rational of all animals. Just as leopards ought to excel at running if they are to count as good leopards, so human beings ought to excel at reasoning if they are to count as good human beings. If we aim instead to excel at running or jumping or making money, we have not properly understood what it means to be a human being. Thus, of one who boasted of his diving, Aristippus [a student of Socrates] asked, ‘Are you not ashamed to be proud of that which a dolphin can do?”

ReasonPhilosophyMoney
Book:Augustus: Invitation to Philosophy
Create image

“Socrates is a shining example of a man who bravely lived up to his ideals, and, in the end, bravely died for them. Throughout his life, he never lost faith in the mind’s ability to discern and decide, and so to apprehend and master reality. Nor did he ever betray truth and integrity for a pitiable life of self-deception and semi-consciousness. In seeking relentlessly to align mind with matter and thought with fact, he remained faithful both to himself and to the world, with the result that he is still alive in this sentence and millions of others that have been written about him. More than a great philosopher, Socrates was the living embodiment of the dream that philosophy might one day set us free.”

PhilosophyTruthFreedomCourageSelf EsteemPlatoSocratesGreek PhilosophyAncient Philosophy
Book:Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions
Create image

“True humility derives from a proper perspective of our human condition: one among billions on a small planet among billions, like a fungus on a tiny fragment of cheese. Of course, it is nearly impossible for human beings to remain this objective for very long, but truly humble people are nonetheless far more conscious of the insignificance of their true relations, an insignificance that verges on non-existence. A speck of dust does not think itself more superior or inferior than another, nor does it concern itself for what other specks of dust might or might not think. Enthralled by the miracle of existence, the truly humble person lives not for herself or her image, but for life itself, in a condition of pure peace and pleasure.”

PhilosophyHappinessJoyPsychologyPerspectiveEmotions
Book:Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions
Create image

“In refining their senses and aesthetic judgement, blind tasters become much more conscious of the richness not only of wine but also of other potentially complex beverages such as tea, coffee, and spirits, and, by extension, the flavours in food, the scents in the air, and the play of light in the world. For life is consciousness, and consciousness is life.”

PhilosophyWineBlind Tasting
Book:The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting
Create image