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Philosophy Quotes

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Philosophy Quotes

“I am at war... with the principal personage of traditional philosophy, that abstract subject who masquerades as everyone and anyone, but is really a male subject in disguise.”

War Philosophy Subjects Males Traditional Abstract Principal Disguise Masquerade

Author:Pam Gems

“The fact that astrology nevertheless yields valid results proves that it is not the apparent positions of the stars which work, but rather the times which are measured or determined by arbitrarily named stellar positions. Time thus proves to be a stream of energy filled with qualities and not, as our philosophy would have it, an abstract concept or precondition of knowledge.”

Philosophy Facts Energy Stars Results Quality Position Prove Concepts Filled Determined Abstract Streams Yield Nevertheless Astrology Stellar

Book:Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal

Source: Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal

“Can an idea a notion as abstract as Relativism produce by itself the effects alleged? cause all the harm, destroy all the lives and reputations? I am as far as anyone can be from denying the power of ideas in history, but the suggestion that a philosophy (as Relativism is often called) has perverted millions and debased daily life is on the face of it absurd. No idea working alone has ever demoralized society, and there have been plenty of ideas simpler and more exciting than Relativism.”

Source: The Culture We Deserve

“The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality - to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our sense-intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle.”

World Needs Trying Philosophy Facts Reality Existence Theory Approach Western Intellect Circles Abstract Divided Squares Evident Propositions Doubted Outside World

Author:Bruce Lee

“Philosophers are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration" most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.”

“At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.”

Needs Philosophy Reality Intellectual Concepts Concern Labor Committed Separation Abstract Bores Manuals Untrue Prevailing Enslavement Transcending Philosophic Subversion Manual Labor

Author:Herbert Marcuse

“In civilized places idleness, once the prerequisite for abstract thought, poetry, religion, philosophy, and falling in love, has become a character flaw. In America we've managed to stamp it out almost completely, and few people under forty can remember a single moment of it, even in earliest childhood. The phrase 'spare time' has vanished from the land.”

Source: Wasn't the Grass Greener?: A Curmudgeon's Fond Memories

“It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. On the other hand, abstract belief is largely impossible; it is the concrete, the actuality of the cup, the candle, the sacrificial stone, which hardens belief; the statue is nothing until it cries, the philosophy is nothing until the philosopher is martyred.”

Matter Philosophy Hands Might Belief Impossible Cry Stones Philosopher Cups Abstract Candle Concrete Statues Exotic Actuality Martyred

Author:Shirley Jackson

“The beginning of sense, not to say wisdom, is to realize that 'doing an action,' as used in philosophy, is a highly abstract expression--it is a stand-in used in the place of any (or almost any?) verb with a personal subject, in the same sort of way that 'thing' is a stand-in for anynoun substantive, and 'quality' a stand-in for the adjective.”

Way Philosophy Action Used Realizing Quality Subjects Expression Abstract Verbs Adjectives

Author:J. L. Austin

“I see philosophy as a fairly abstract activity, as concerned mainly with the analysis of criticism and concepts, and of course most usefully of scientific concepts.”

Philosophy Courses Activity Concepts Concerned Criticism Analysis Abstract

Author:A.J. Ayer

“An idol is not necessarily something concrete, like a golden calf. It can also be something abstract, like matter. Is matter part of the created order? Sure it is. So the philosophy of materialism qualifies as an idol in the biblical sense.”

Matter Philosophy Order Golden Abstract Materialism Idols Concrete Biblical Calves

Author:Nancy Pearcey

“Although a lot of my work on the mind has been rather abstract and philosophical, I'm interested in psychology and neuroscience and I don't think there are any principled distinctions between the kind of knowledge we get from science and the knowledge we get from philosophy.”

Thinking Mind Kind Has Beens Philosophy Psychology Philosophical Abstract Distinction Neuroscience Principled

Author:Tim Crane