philosophybits

[philosophybits]

“Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (2.14)

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A man when drunk is led by a boy, stumbling and not knowing where he goes, since his soul is wet. A ray of light the dry soul, wisest and best.

Heraclitus, Fragments, B117 & B118

#philosophy #quotes #Heraclitus #Fragments #intoxication #drunkenness #wisdom

[philosophybits]

“The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.”

— Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

[philosophybits]

“Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?”

— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

[philosophybits]

“It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.”

— Aristotle, Poetics

[philosophybits]

Men respond only faintly to the horrors that take place around them, except at moments, when the savage, crying incongruity and ghastliness of our condition suddenly reveals itself vivid before our eyes, and we are forced to know what we are. Then the ground slides away from under our feet.

Lev Shestov, All Things Are Possible

#philosophy #quotes #Lev Shestov #All Things Are Possible #suffering #misery #pain #awareness

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“Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.”

— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

[philosophybits]

The Way has its reality and its signs but is without action or form. You can hand it down, but you cannot receive it; you can get it, but you cannot see it. It is its own source, its own root. Before Heaven and earth existed, it was there, firm from ancient times. It gave spirituality to the spirits and to God; it gave birth to Heaven and to earth. It exists beyond the highest point, and yet you cannot call it lofty; it exists beneath the limit of the six directions, and yet you cannot call it deep. It was born before Heaven and earth, and yet you cannot say it has been there for long; it is earlier than the earliest time, and yet you cannot call it old.

Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, Watson tr. (Ch 6)

#philosophy #quotes #Zhuangzi #The Complete Works of Zhuangzi #nonaction #nondistinction #daoism

[philosophybits]

“Philosophizing is: rejecting false arguments.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951

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The person who lives without folly is not as wise as he thinks.

François de La Rochefoucauld, Moral Reflections

#philosophy #quotes #François de La Rochefoucauld #Moral Reflections #foolishness #risk #wisdom

[philosophybits]

“There ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.”

— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

[philosophybits]

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or colour, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever.

Simone Weil, "Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation"

#philosophy #quotes #Simone Weil #Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation #needs #humanity

[philosophybits]

“Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.”

— Blaise Pascal, Pensées

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“This state of ‘no-mind’ exists, as it were, on a knife-edge between the carelessness of the average sensual man and the strained over-eagerness of the zealot for salvation. To achieve it, one must walk delicately and, to maintain it, must learn to combine the most intense alertness with a tranquil and self-denying passivity, the most indomitable determination with a perfect submission to the leadings of the spirit.”

— Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

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“The only thought to liberate the mind is that which leaves it alone, certain of its limits and of its impending end. No doctrine tempts it. It awaits the ripening of the work and of life.”

— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

[philosophybits]

Discussions of the way in which truth is correspondence to reality float free of discussions of what there is in heaven and earth. No roads lead from the project of giving truth-conditions for the sentences of English (English as it is spoken, containing all sorts of theories about all sorts of things) to criteria for theory-choice or to the construction of a canonical notation which "limns the true and ultimate structure of reality." Correspondence, for Davidson, is a relation which has no ontological preferences — it can tie any sort of word to any sort of thing. This neutrality is an expression of the fact that, in a Davidsonian view, nature has no preferred way of being represented, and thus no interest in a canonical notation. Nor can nature be corresponded to better or worse, save in the simple sense that we can have more or fewer true beliefs.

Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

#philosophy #quotes #Richard Rorty #Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature #truth #correspondence #reality #language #representation #theory #ontology #metaphysics

[philosophybits]

“The cause of anger is the belief that we are injured; this belief, therefore, should not be lightly entertained. We ought not to fly into a rage even when the injury appears to be open and distinct: for some false things bear the semblance of truth. We should always allow some time to elapse, for time discloses the truth.”

— Seneca, On Anger