Browsing Quotes With Tag: philosophy (27)
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Science fiction tends to be philosophy for stupid people.
Speaker: Chuck KlostermanSource: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa PuffsPosted: 19 Sep 2009 at 5:04 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I think [Science is] the way of arriving at truth about the universe because, taken at its most general sense, science is disciplined inquiry. It’s an inquiry that formulates its questions carefully, and which tests them – and it does so in a way that is public and repeatable – which submits itself to review by other people (i.e. – challenge), and which is very open-minded; it’s prepared to accept that it may not arrive at answers but, if it does arrive at answers, those answers might generate new questions. But it’s prepared to put up with those. There’s something very special about the scientific mindset, which is that it is prepared to live with open-endedness.
Speaker: A.C. GraylingSource: http://whyscience.co.uk/Posted: 07 Aug 2009 at 7:04 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
You do not take up philosophy the way you enter the seminary, with a credo as your sword and a single path as your destiny. Should you study Plato. Epicurus, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel or even Husserl? Esthetics, politics, morality, epistemology, metaphysics? Should you devote your time to teaching, to producing a body of work, to research, to Culture? It makes no difference. The only thing that matters is your intention: are you elevating thought and contributing to the common good, or rather joining the ranks in a field of study whose only purpose is its own perpetuation, and only function the self-reproduction of a sterile elite – for this turns the university into a sect.
Speaker: Muriel BarberySource: the Elegance of the HedgehogPosted: 27 Jun 2009 at 1:02 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
If you want to make a [university] career, take a marginal, exotic text (William Ockham’s 'Sum of Logic’) that is relatively unexplored, abuse its literal meaning by ascribing it to an intention that the author himself had not been aware of (because, as we all know, the unknown in conceptual matters is far more powerful than any conscious design), distort that meaning to the point where it resembles an original thesis (it is the concept of the absolute power of God that is at the basis of a logical analysis, the philosophical implications of which are ignored), burn all your icons while you’re at it (atheism, faith in Reason as opposed to the reason of faith, love of wisdom ad other bagatelles dear to the hearts of socialists), devote a year of your life to this unworthy little game at the expense of a collectivity whom you drag from their beds at seven in the morning, and send a courier to your research director.
Speaker: Muriel BarberySource: the Elegance of the HedgehogPosted: 27 Jun 2009 at 12:59 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I have always been fascinated by the abnegation with which we human beings are capable of devoting a great deal of energy to the quest for nothing and to the rehashing of useless and absurd ideas. I spoke with a young doctoral candidate in Greek patristics and wondered how so much youth could be squandered in the service of nothingness. When you consider that a primate’s major preoccupations are sex, territory and hierarchy, spending one’s time reflecting on the meaning of prayer for Augustine of Hippo seems a relatively futile exercise.
To be sure, there are those who will argue that mankind aspires to meaning beyond mere impulses. But I would counter that while this is certainly true (otherwise, what am I to do with literature?), it is also utterly false: meaning is merely another impulse, an impulse carried to the highest degree of achievement, in that it uses the most effective means – understanding – to attain its goals. For the quest for meaning abd beauty is hardly a sign that man has an elevated nature, that by leaving behind his animal impulses he will go on to find the justification of his existence in the enlightenment of the spirit: no, it is a primed weapon in the service of a trivial and material goal. And when the weapon becomes its own subject, this is the simple consequence of the specific neuronal wiring that distinguishes us from other animals; by allowing us to survive, the efficiency of intelligence also offers us the possibility of complexity without foundation, thought without usefulness, and beauty without purpose. It’s like a computer bug, a consequence without consequence of the subtlety of our cortex, a superfluous perversion making an utterly wasteful use of the means at our disposal.Speaker: Muriel BarberySource: the Elegance of the HedgehogPosted: 25 Jun 2009 at 8:12 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to not seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
Speaker: Bertrand RussellPosted: 20 Mar 2009 at 7:12 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute.
Speaker: AristotlePosted: 18 Mar 2009 at 5:37 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
The philosophical meanderings of uninspired men… something more destructive than the crosses of early Christianity.
Speaker: M. Russell BallardPosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 12:57 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, all in one.
Speaker: John RuskinPosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:28 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.
Speaker: Francis BaconPosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:18 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Man is not made to understand life, but to live it.
Speaker: SantayanaPosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:17 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labor of thinking.
Speaker: Thomas EdisonPosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:02 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as from your own.
Speaker: Henry FordPosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 7:39 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
If you will come to me and say ‘let us sit down and take counsel together, and, if we differ from one another, understand why it is that we differ from one another, just what the points at issue are,’ we will presently find that we are not so far apart after all, that the points on which we differ are few and the points on which we agree are many, and that if we only had the patience and the candor and the desire to get together, we will get together.
Speaker: Woodrow WilsonPosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 7:17 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Think as wise men do but speak as the common people do.
Speaker: AristotlePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 7:12 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Sometimes, I look outside, and I think that a lot of other people have seen this snow before. Just like I think that a lot of other people have read those books before. And listened to those songs.
I wonder how they feel tonight.
…I guess what I’m saying is that this all feels very familiar. But it’s not mine to be familiar about. I just know that another kid has felt this. This one time when it’s peaceful outside, and you’re seeing things move, and you don’t want to, and everyone is asleep. And all the books you’ve read have been read by other people. And all the songs you’ve loved have been heard by other people. And that girl that’s pretty to you is pretty to other people. And you know that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing “unity.”
It’s like when you are excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them. And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad. And all you want is to always feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means that you’re happy too.Speaker: Stephen ChboskyPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 4:40 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Do you always think this much, Charlie?”
“Is that bad?”
“Not necessarily. It’s just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.”
“Is that bad?”
“Yes”Speaker: Stephen ChboskyPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 4:23 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“I would not hesitate to say that those who pass for thinkers on this earth, for men of subtle reasoning, are guilty of being the greatest fools. For no one in this life of ours knows happiness.” Messenger
Speaker: EurpiidesPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 12:03 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“There are only three places to look. Science – and I was taught more about how the universe ticks while I was still in the nest than human scientists can yet handle. So much that I can’t talk to them, even about as elementary a gimmick as levitation. I’m not disparaging scientists. What they do is as it should be; I grok that fully. But what they are after is not what I am looking for – you don’t grok a desert by counting its grains of sand. Then there’s philosophy – supposed to tackle everything. Does it? All any philosopher comes out with is what he walked in with – except for self-deluders who prove their assumptions by their conclusions.”
Speaker: Robert HeinleinPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 11:55 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Humans must not be allowed to notice that all great moralists are sent by the Enemy, not to inform men, but to remind them, to restate the primeval moral platitudes against our continual concealment of them. We make the Sophists: He raises up a Socrates to answer them.
Speaker: C.S. LewisPosted: 20 Aug 2008 at 8:40 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment!