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Philosophical Quotes

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Philosophical Quotes

“The unphilosophical and philosophical attitudes can be very sharply distinguished (with scarcely any intermediate forms) by the fact that the first accepts everything that happens as regards its general form, and finds occasion for surprise only in that special content by which something that happens here today differs from what happened there yesterday; whereas for the second, it is precisely the common features of all experience, such as characterise everything we encounter, which are the primary and most profound occasion for astonishment.”

“I know that there are many persons to whom it seems derogatory to link a body of philosophic ideas to the social life and cultureof their epoch. They seem to accept a dogma of immaculate conception of philosophical systems.”

Knows Persons Ideas Body Seems Social Accepting Philosophical Links Conception Dogma Social Life Epoch Philosophic Immaculate Derogatory Immaculate Conception

Book:The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, education, democracy

Source: The Essential Dewey: Pragmatism, education, democracy

“The philosophical spirit is not satisfied to simply accept what it is told, no matter how much prestige the teller seems to have. This is true even if the teller is a god.”

Ifs Matter Seems Spirit Accepting Philosophical Satisfied Prestige

Book:The Earth, The Gods and The Soul - A History of Pagan Philosophy: From the Iron Age to the 21st Century

Source: The Earth, The Gods and The Soul - A History of Pagan Philosophy: From the Iron Age to the 21st Century

“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.”

Whole Stories Accepting Intellectual Philosophical Preparation Obsessed Refusal Victor's Preparation For Death

Author:Kenneth Branagh

“What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can reject or accept as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it.”

Men Persons Soul Philosophy Wish Accepting Pieces Depends Philosophical Rejects Furniture Animated

Author:Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“Still I believe that Hanna Arendt, she was wrong when she tried to say that we are all actually capable of this, it's not true. I think it's not true. There are certain things human beings are not capable of. I mean people, even normal human beings. You have to do certain things in order to become what the enemy was and I didn't accept her philosophical outlook on that.”

People Thinking Believe Humans Mean Stills Certain Order I Believe Human Beings Accepting Enemy Normal Capable Philosophical Outlook Mean People

Author:Elie Wiesel

“A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.”

“More and more people are becoming unable to accept traditional [religious] beliefs. If they think that, apart from these beliefs, there is no reason for kindly behaviour, the results may be needlessly unfortunate. That is why it is important to show that no supernatural reasons are needed to make [people] kind and to prove that only through kindness can the human race achieve happiness.”

Source: Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68

“To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will-to-life. At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life as his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental principle of the moral, and it is a necessity of thought.”

“As so often happens in philosophy, clever people accept a false general principle on a priori grounds and then devote endless labour and ingenuity to explaining away plain facts which obviously conflict with it.”

People Philosophy Facts Happens Accepting Principles Conflict Philosophical Clever Endless Labour Explaining Ingenuity

Author:C. D. Broad

“Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome,or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die.”

Mean Has Beens Dies Accepting Ought Absolutes Philosophical Oneself Philosopher Redemption Acknowledge Outcomes Mortality Resurrection Plato Positive Outcome

Author:Jacques Derrida

“The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.”

Firsts Accepting Doubt Philosophical Aries

Author:Rene Descartes

“When it comes to the origin of life there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation. There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore, we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance!”

Way Years Believe Two Chance Accepting Impossible Generations Creation Possibility Hundred Years Ago Thirds Philosophical Conclusion Spontaneous Origin Of Life

Author:George Wald