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Philosophical Quotes

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Philosophical Quotes

“Spiritual intelligence is the capacity to conduct our life in such a way that it reflects deep philosophical and metaphysical understanding of reality and of ourselves discovered through personal experience during systematic spiritual pursuit.”

Way Reality Spiritual Understanding Our Lives Capacity Philosophical Pursuit Metaphysical Systematic Personal Experiences Spiritual Intelligence Deep Philosophical

Author:Stanislav Grof

“Who is that is dreaming all of this? Ecstasy, pure ecstasy, joy beyond understanding, bliss beyond the dry dullness of the mind's philosophical ranging, light beyond any light in this world - The substance and the essence of all existence is this light, the transcendental light.”

World Mind Dream Light Joy Understanding Existence This World Pure Essence Philosophical Substance Bliss Dry Ecstasy Transcendental Dullness

Author:Frederick Lenz

“Spiritual Balance is the obvious answer to the obsession that sometimes accompanies religious practice, occult practice, philosophical understandings - the assertion that one is right - that something that you're doing is better than something somebody else is doing, the way you're doing it is better than the way someone else is doing it.”

“You can see a lot about our mission on our website, but the basic idea is that the church believes that understanding human beings and the Earth requires not only faith but also reason, and not only philosophical reason but also scientific reason.”

Believe Humans Ideas Reason Earth Understanding Church Human Beings Philosophical Missions Website

Author:Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo

“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.”

“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”

Knows Ideas Different Science Order Understanding Answers Events Concern Function Increase Philosophical Reports Interpretation Implications Factual Philosophical Questions

Author:Susanne Katherina Langer

“The entrance into Zen is the grasping of one's essential nature. It is absolutely impossible, however, to come to a clear understanding of our essential nature by any intellectual or philosophical method. It is accomplished only by the experience of self-realization through zazen.”

Self Understanding Nature Clear Impossible Essentials Intellectual Experience Philosophical Method Self Realization Realization Accomplished Entrances Grasping

Book:The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans

Source: The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans

“Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.”

Reason Found Understanding Imagination Ability Genius Philosophical Aptitude Vivid Imagination

Author:Marcus Aurelius

“To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.”

Way Understanding Study Normal Philosophical Best Way Psychiatry Abnormal Normal And Abnormal

Author:William James

“If you could read some of the stories that we had before us of parents of children dying of, let's say, bone cancer. Or people who dealt with family members drowning in their own bodies, in the end, suffering without any hope of modern medical science easing their pain or offering any comfort. With the absolute knowledge that they were going to die anyway. I can't quite comprehend how we could want those people to continue to suffer that extreme agony on the understanding that it is the will of a creator or some other philosophical concept.”

“Work on causal theories of knowledge - early work by Armstrong, and Dretske, and Goldman - seemed far more satisfying. As I started to see the ways in which work in the cognitive sciences could inform our understanding of central epistemological issues, my whole idea of what the philosophical enterprise is all about began to change. Quine certainly played a role here, as did Putnam's (pre-1975) work in philosophy of science, and the exciting developments that went on in that time in philosophy of mind.”

“When ideas float in our mind, without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call reverie.”

Mind Ideas Dream Understanding Reflection Philosophical Regard Floats Daydreaming Reverie Incubation

Author:John Locke

“I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking.”

People Kind Understanding Talking Generations New York Philosophical Old People My Generation People Talking

Author:Wynton Marsalis

“The past has no power over the present moment.”

“Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within. . . . Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason.”

People Ifs Giving Children Doe Art Real Reason Helping Use Used Mother Understanding Saws Birth Tasks Philosophical Insight Innate Helping People Delivery Midwife

Author:Jostein Gaarder

“One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.”

“Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.”

Understanding Speech Philosophical Conception

Author:Thomas Hobbes

“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.”

“It's only when I say that everything is incomprehensible that I come as close as possible to understanding the only thing it is given to us to understand.”

Given Understanding Philosophical

Author:Eugene Ionesco

“Constitutions are not designed for metaphysical or logical subtleties, for niceties of expression, for critical propriety, for elaborate shades of meaning, or for the exercise of philosophical acuteness or judicial research. They are instruments of a practical nature, founded on the common business of human life, adapted to common wants, designed for common use, and fitted for common understandings.”

Source: Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution

“The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.”

Men Understanding Money Business Power Philosophical Sells Marketing Helping Others Superiors Commerce Inferiors Superiority Superior Man Selling Out

Author:Confucius

“No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.”

Law Understanding Philosophical Ordinances

Book:Laws

Source: Laws

“The progress of science requires the growth of understanding in both directions, downward from the whole to the parts and upward from the parts to the whole. A reductionist philosophy, arbitrarily proclaiming that the growth of understanding must go only in one direction, makes no scientific sense. Indeed, dogmatic philosophical beliefs of any kind have no place in science.”

Kind Philosophy Whole Belief Understanding Growth Progress Philosophical One Direction Dogmatic Proclaiming

Book:Nature's imagination: the frontiers of scientific vision

Source: Nature's imagination: the frontiers of scientific vision

“Man cannot be enlightened through any organization, creed, dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through understanding the contents of his own mind, through observation, not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.”

Men Mind Understanding Intellectual Organization Philosophical Technique Psychological Observation Analysis Enlightened Priests Ritual Creeds Dogma Introspective Dissection

Book:The Journey Home

Source: The Journey Home

“In my own version of the idea of 'what art wants,' the end and fulfillment of the history of art is the philosophical understanding of what art is, an understanding that is achieved in the way that understanding in each of our lives is achieved, namely, from the mistakes we make, the false paths we follow, the false images we have come to abandon until we learn wherein our limits consist, and then how to live within those limits.”

Way Want Art Ideas Ends Life Is Understanding My Own Mistake Path Our Lives Limits Art Is Philosophical Versions Fulfillment Abandon

Author:Arthur Danto