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Philosophical Quotes

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Philosophical Quotes

“While brother Joseph was referring to the provinces of God, I was led to reflect that there is no act, no principle, no power belonging to the Deity that is purely philosophical. The birth of the Saviour was as natural as are the births of our children; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood - was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers.”

“Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.”

Giving Doe Philosophy Body Results Clear Activity Tasks Philosophical Aim Boundaries Doctrine Logical Propositions Cloudy Clarification

Book:Tractatus Logico-philosophicus: The German Text of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung

Source: Tractatus Logico-philosophicus: The German Text of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung

“The result of civilization, at the Sandwich Islands and elsewhere, is found productive to the civilizers, destructive to the civilizees. It is said to be compensation--a very philosophical word; but it appears to be very much on the principle of the old game, "You lose, I win": good philosophy for the winner.”

“The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.”

“Logical investigations can obviously be a useful tool for philosophy. They must, however, be informed by a sensitivity to the philosophical significance of the formalism and by a generous admixture of common sense, as well as a thorough understanding both of the basic concepts and of the technical details of the formal material used. It should not be supposed that the formalism can grind out philosophical results in a manner beyond the capacity of ordinary philosophical reasoning. There is no mathematical substitute for philosophy.”

“We might even invent laws for series or formula in an arbitrary manner, and set the engine to work upon them, and thus deduce numerical results which we might not otherwise have thought of obtaining; but this would hardly perhaps in any instance be productive of any great practical utility, or calculated to rank higher than as a philosophical amusement.”

Might Law Results Higher Philosophical Series Practicals Instance Productive Formulas Engines Amusement Arbitrary Utility Obtaining

Author:Ada Lovelace

“The environmental crisis has deep spiritual, philosophical, and religious roots and causes. It is not merely the result of bad engineering.”

Spiritual Causes Religious Results Roots Philosophical Crisis Environmental Engineering Environmental Crisis Deep Spiritual

Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr

“The fundamental thing about human languages is that they can and should be used to describe something; and this something is, somehow, the world. To be constantly and almost exclusively interested in the medium - in spectacle-cleaning - is a result of a philosophical mistake.”

World Should Humans Used Language Results Mistake Philosophical Fundamentals Mediums Cleaning Human Language

Author:Karl Popper

“If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.”

Ifs Enough Care Desire Motivation Leadership Results Careers Philosophical If You Care

Author:William James

“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”

People Work Results Technology Computer Economics Philosophical Productions Invention Useless Unemployment Uselessness Useful Things Computer Technology Useless Things

Book:Marx's Concept of Man: Including 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts'

Source: Marx's Concept of Man: Including 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts'

“Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.”

Results Philosophical Intellect Pessimism Stubbornness Obstinate Obstinacy

Book:Religion From the Essays of Arhur Schopenhauer

Source: Religion From the Essays of Arhur Schopenhauer

“Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.”

Ifs Philosophy Science Next Born Results Birth Survival Consequence Accounts Philosophical Philosophy Of Science

Book:For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

Source: For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

“Science is a human activity, and the best way to understand it is to understand the individual human beings who practise it. Science is an art form and not a philosophical method. The great advances in science usually result from new tools rather than from new doctrines. ... Every time we introduce a new tool, it always leads to new and unexpected discoveries, because Nature's imagination is richer than ours.”

“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

“Reason is universal because no attempted challenge to its results can avoid appealing to reason in the end-by claiming, for example, that what was presented as an argument is really a rationalization. This can undermine our confidence in the original method or practice only by giving us reasons to believe something else, so that finally we have to think about the arguments to make up our minds.”

Thinking Giving Mind Believe Ends Reason Challenges Results Practice Example Argument Universal Philosophical Originals Method

Book:Other Minds: Critical Essays 1969-1994

Source: Other Minds: Critical Essays 1969-1994

“Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals.”

Character Results Philosophical Principal

Author:David Hume

“When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East--above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe--we discover there many a truth, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy.”

Source: Course of the History of Modern Philosophy