Philosopher Quotes

Mankind ought to end its existence of its own will.

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible.

Since money belongs to the community … it would seem that the community may control it as it wills, and therefore may make as much profit from alteration as it likes, and treat money as its own property.

There was a Socratic style of life (which the Cynics were to imitate), and the Socratic dialogue was an exercise which brought Socrates' interlocutor to put himself in question, to take care of himself, and to make his soul as beautiful and wise as possible.

All forms of yoga involve occult assumptions, even hatha yoga, which is often presented as a merely physical discipline.

Douglas Groothuis

When writers with the reputation of intelligent and perceptive critics of human life teach us, day in and day out, that vileness is distinguishable from decency only in respect of being less hypocritical, … it is small wonder that ordinary people come to disbelieve in any objective principles by appeal to which one form of conduct can be regarded as morally better than another.

R. W. K. Paterson

Factual assertions and fundamental principles are...merely parts of theories: they are given within the framework of a theory; they are chosen and valid within this framework; and subsequently they are dependent upon it. This holds for all empirical sciences—for the natural sciences as well as those pertaining to history.

He best honors God who makes his intellect as like God as possible.

Quintus Sextius

I recall an incident involving the late George Stigler at a conference in Spain in the 1980s. Hearing that I had written a book on reason and natural law, Stigler started to ridicule reason, going so far as to say that there is as much reason in a monkey's antics as in any human act. At that point I asked him whether he was trying to tell me something about how he wrote his books; he gave me a blank stare and stormed out of the room.

To discover the true principles of morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods. They need but common sense. They have only to look within themselves, to reflect upon their own nature, to consult their obvious interests, to consider the object of society and of each of the members who compose it, and they will easily understand that virtue is an advantage, and that vice is an injury to beings of the species.

Man is the work of nature: he exists in nature: he is submitted to her laws: he cannot deliver himself from them: nor step beyond them, even in thought.

Baron d'Holbach

The most delightful of all music, that of your own praises.

This swallowing up of life in nothingness, this obliteration of life by nothingness is what the emotion of malice ultimately desires. The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness.

John Cowper Powys

What then is the content of the concept of God common to all monotheistic religions? What remains, it seems, is only the emotional content: the highest enthusiasm and respect, humility and submissiveness

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz

If life is not real, life is not earnest, and the grave is its goal, perhaps it's ridiculous t otake ourselves so seriously.

Cultivate truth, good faith, experience, cleverness, sociability, and industry.

Pittacus of Mytilene

A collection of errors does not make a truth: quality cannot stem from quantity – a value is not a weight. The reasons of the majority cannot be taken as good reasons.

Alain de Benoist

The law, unfortunately, has always been retained on the side of power; laws have uniformly been enacted for the protection and perpetuation of power.

The Senses place before us the Characters of the Book of Nature; but these convey no knowledge to us, till we have discovered the Alphabet by which they are to be read.

William Whewell

Remote fountains are of little help to nearby fires.

Anthropocentrism gave rise to boredom, and when anthropomorphism was replaced by technocentrism, boredom became even more profound.

No doubt, a scientist isn't necessarily penalized for being a complex, versatile, eccentric individual with lots of extra-scientific interests. But it certainly doesn't help him a bit.

Stephen Edelston Toulmin

The Aegean sea washes Greece on two sides: first, the side that faces towards the east and stretches from Sunium, towards the north as far as the Thermaean Gulf and Thessaloniceia, a Macedonian city...; and secondly, the side that faces towards the south, I mean the Macedonian country, extending from Thessaloniceia as far as the Strymon.

The time has gone by when the intelligent public needs to be reminded of the practical utility of science, or of the fact that the investigation of any problem, however apparently remote from everyday life, may be fraught with the most valuable consequences.

The moral and religious teachings of no bible reach a higher altitude than the intelligence and mental development of the age and country which produced it.