A species of dogmatism

One can be positive of one’s own way that it leads to the goal and not that others cannot. That would be a species of dogmatism.
~ T. R. V. Murti

He has merely comprehended himself

When a speculative philosopher believes he has comprehended the world once and for all in his system, he is deceiving himself; he has merely comprehended himself and then naively projected that view upon the world.
~ C. G. Jung

He who knows does not speak

He who knows does not speak;
He who speaks does not know.
Tao Te Ching

Every act of knowledge develops the learner

Learning is not the accumulation of scraps of knowledge. It is a growth, where every act of knowledge develops the learner.
~ Edmund Husserl

And he wants to understand it

 “This attempt stands without rival as the most audacious enterprise in which the mind of man has ever engaged. Just reflect for a moment: Here is man, surrounded by the vastness of a universe in which he is only a tiny and perhaps insignificant part—and he wants to understand it.”
~ William Halverson

In our infinite ignorance we are all equal

I believe that it would be worth trying to learn something about the world even if in trying to do so we should merely learn that we do not know much . . . It might be well for all of us to remember that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.
~ Karl Popper - Conjectures and Refutations (1963)

Progress from misconception to ever better (less mistaken) misconception

"The desirable future is one where we progress from misconception to ever better (less mistaken) misconception. The nature of science would be better understood if we called theories ‘misconceptions’ from the outset, instead of only after we have discovered their successors. Thus we could say that Einstein’s Misconception of Gravity was an improvement on Newton’s Misconception, which was an improvement on Kepler’s. The neo-Darwinian Misconception of Evolution is an improvement on Darwin’s Misconception, and his on Lamarck’s. If people thought of it like that, perhaps no one would need to be reminded that science claims neither infallibility nor finality."

The height of injustice is to seem just without being so

The height of injustice is to seem just without being so.
~ Plato

The pursuit of money should come last in the scale of value

The pursuit of money should come last in the scale of value.
~ Plato

To understand Plato is to be educated

To understand Plato is to be educated.
~ Edith Hamilton

Plato advised drunken people to look into a mirror

Plato advised drunken people to look into a mirror.
~ Diogenes Laërtius

To find out where the truth is

I think a man’s duty is … to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to dis- prove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life.
~ Plato

The greatest happiness of the whole

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
~ Plato

Astronomy compels the soul to look upward

Astronomy compels the soul to look upward and leads us from this world to another.
~ Plato

The feeling of wonder is the touchstone of the philosopher

The feeling of wonder is the touchstone of the philosopher, and all philosophy has its origins in wonder.
~ Plato

I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument

I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, and shooting one another.
~ Thomas Jefferson

This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense

At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.
~ Carl Sagan

Tthe discovery that we are profoundly ignorant

The greatest single achievement of science in this most scientifically productive of centuries is the discovery that we are profoundly ignorant; we know very little about nature and understand even less.
~ Lewis Thomas

To believe upon insufficient evidence

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone to believe upon insufficient evidence.
~ W. K. Clifford (nineteenth-century mathematician)

The philosophy of the cancer cell

‘Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell.’
~ Edward Abbey

In the regime of the city

‘If a man were to under- take a systematic enquiry to find out what is most destructive of friendship and most productive of enmity, he would find it in the regime of the city.’
~ Philodemus of Gadara

Wider ‘networks’ of friends and friendship

While unable to put our suspicions to rest and stop sniffing out treachery and fearing frustration, we seek – compulsively and passionately – wider ‘networks’ of friends and friendship; indeed, as wide a ‘network’ as we can manage to squeeze into the mobile phone directory that, obligingly, grows more capacious with every new generation of mobiles.
~ Zygmunt Bauman - Liquid Fear

A becoming other of the self

‘The friend is not another I but an otherness immanent in selfness, a becoming other of the self.’
~ Giorgio Agamben

In loving their friend they love what is good for themselves

‘In loving their friend they love what is good for themselves. For the good person, in becoming a friend, becomes a good for the person to whom they become a friend.’
~ Aristotle

We will look foolish, for though we are friends...

‘We will look foolish, for though we are friends, we have not been able to say what friendship is.’
~ Socrates’ conclusion in Plato’s dialogue on friendship, the Lysis

A gift is something that you cannot be thankful for

‘A gift is something that you cannot be thankful for.’
~ Jacques Derrida

‘Love is the difficult realisation that...

‘Love is the difficult realisation that some-thing other than oneself is real.’
~ Iris Murdoch

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live

‘Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.’
~ Oscar Wilde

The sadist doesn't create a masochist; he finds him readymade

"Do we wonder why one of man's chief characteristics is his tortured dissatisfaction with himself, his constant self-criticism? It is the only way he has to overcome the sense of hopeless limitation inherent in his real situation. Dictators, revivalists, and sadists know that people like to be lashed with accusations of their own basic unworthiness because it reflects how they truly feel about themselves. The sadist doesn't create a masochist; he finds him readymade. Thus people are offered one way of overcoming unworthiness: the chance to idealize the self, to lift it onto truly heroic levels. In this way man sets up the complementary dialogue with himself that is natural to his condition. He criticizes himself because he falls short of the heroic ideals he needs to meet in order to be a really imposing creation."

It creates precisely the isolation that one can't stand

"Man thus has the absolute tension of the dualism. Individuation means that the human creature has to oppose itself to the rest of nature. It creates precisely the isolation that one can't stand—and yet needs in order to develop distinctively. It creates the difference that becomes such a burden; it accents the smallness of oneself and the sticking-outness at the same time. This is natural guilt. The person experiences this as "unworthiness" or "badness" and dumb inner dissatisfaction. And the reason is realistic. Compared to the rest of nature man is not a very satisfactory creation. He is riddled with fear and powerlessness."

All the tears and all the tearing is after all for oneself

"This aspect of group psychology explains something that otherwise staggers our imagination: have we been astonished by fantastic displays of grief on the part of whole peoples when one of their leaders dies? The uncontrolled emotional outpouring, the dazed masses standing huddled in the; city squares sometimes for days on end, grown people groveling hysterically and tearing at themselves, being trampled in the surge toward the coffin or funeral pyre— how to make sense out of such a massive, neurotic "vaudeville of despair"? In one way only: it shows a profound state of shock at losing one's bulwark against death. The people apprehend, at some dumb level of their personality: "Our locus of power to control life and death can himself die; therefore our own immortality is in doubt." All the tears and all the tearing is after all for oneself, not for the passing of a great soul but for one's own imminent passing. Immediately men begin to rename city streets, squares, airports with the name of the dead man: it is as though to declare that he will be immortalized physically in the society, in spite of his own physical death."

Collective eternity impulse

"Every group, however small or great, has, as such, an "individual" impulse for eternalization, which manifests itself in the creation of and care for national, religious, and artistic heroes . . . the individual paves the way for this collective eternity impulse. . ."

The urge to deification of the other

"The urge to deification of the other, the constant placing of certain select persons on pedestals, the reading into them of extra powers: the more they have, the more rubs off on us. We participate in their immortality, and so we create immortals."

Each person maintains his own arrogant point of view

In his ignorance of the whole truth, each person maintains his own arrogant point of view.
~ The Buddha

What the truth ought to be

You will never succeed in getting at the truth if you think you know, ahead of time, what the truth ought to be.
~ Marchette Chute

Facts are the raw material for thinking

Facts are the raw material for thinking.
~ Robert E. Sparks

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens out of the widest vistas.… No one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world’s perspectives.
~ William James

Talk passes the time away

Men talk because men have the capacity for speech, just as monkeys have the capacity for swinging by their tails. For philosophers, as for other human caddis flies, talk passes the time away that would otherwise hang like a millstone about a man’s neck. Tellurians in general, and philosophers in particular, swing from day to day by their long prehensile tongues, and are finally hurled headlong into their silent tombs or flaming furnaces.
~ Herman Tennessen

Mind invents logic for the whims of the will

We do not want a thing because we reason; we find reasons for a thing because we want it. Mind invents logic for the whims of the will.
~ G. W. F. Hegel

People use their leaders almost as an excuse

"I think this characterization is beautifully apt to describe the timid "heroisms" of group behavior. There is nothing free or manly about them. Even when one merges his ego with the authoritarian father, the "spell" is in his own narrow interests. People use their leaders almost as an excuse. When they give in to the leader's commands they can always reserve the feeling that these commands are alien to them, that they are the leader's responsibility, that the terrible acts they are committing are in his name and not theirs. This, then, is another thing that makes people feel so guiltless, as Canetti points out: they can imagine themselves as temporary victims of the leader. The more they give in to his spell, and the more terrible the crimes they commit, the more they can feel that the wrongs are not natural to them. It is all so neat, this usage of the leader; it reminds us of James Frazer's discovery that in the remote past tribes often used their kings as scapegoats who, when they no longer served the people's needs, were put to death. These are the many ways in which men can play the hero, all the while that they are avoiding responsibility for their own acts in a cowardly way."

The leader is as much a creature of the group as they of him

"The leader is as much a creature of the group as they of him and that he loses his "individual distinctiveness" by being a leader, as they do by being followers. He has no more freedom to be himself than any other member of the group, precisely because he has to be a reflex of their assumptions in order to qualify for leadership in the first place."

Holy aggression

"Freud saw that the leader wipes out fear and permits everyone to feel omnipotent. Redl refined this somewhat by showing how important the leader often was by the simple fact that it was he who performed the "initiatory act" when no one else had the daring to do it. Redl calls this beautifully the "magic of the initiatory act." This initiatory act can be anything from swearing to sex or murder. As Redl points out, according to its logic only the one who first commits murder is the murderer; all others are followers. Freud has said in Totem and Taboo that acts that are illegal for the individual can be justified if the whole group shares responsibility for them. But they can be justified in another way: the one who initiates the act takes upon himself both the risk and the guilt. The result is truly magic: each member of the group can repeat the act without guilt. They are not responsible, only the leader is. Redl calls this, aptly, "priority magic." But it does something even more than relieve guilt: it actually transforms the fact of murder. This crucial point initiates us directly into the phenomenology of group transformation of the everyday world. If one murders without guilt, and in imitation of the hero who runs the risk, why then it is no longer murder: it is "holy aggression. For the first one it was not." In other words, participation in the group redistills everyday reality and gives it the aura of the sacred—just as, in childhood play created a heightened reality."

In the prison of the motherly racial-national-religious fixation

"The fear of emerging out of the family and into the world on one's own responsibility and powers; the desire to keep oneself tucked into a larger source of power. It is these things that make for the mystique of "group," "nation," "blood," "mother- or fatherland," and the like. These feelings are embedded in one's earliest experiences of comfortable merger with the mother. As Fromm put it, they keep one "in the prison of the motherly racial-national-religious fixation.""

The masses look to the leaders to give them just the untruth that they need

"By explaining the precise power that held groups together Freud could also show why groups did not fear danger. The members do not feel that they are alone with their own smallness and helplessness, as they have the powers of the hero-leader with whom they are identified. Natural narcissism — the feeling that the person next to you will die, but not you—is reinforced by trusting dependence on the leader's power. No wonder that hundreds of thousands of men marched up from trenches in the face of blistering gunfire in World War I. They were partially self-hypnotised, so to speak. No wonder men imagine victories against impossible odds: don't they have the omnipotent powers of the parental figure? Why are groups so blind and stupid?—men have always asked. Because they demand illusions, answered Freud, they "constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real." And we know why. The real world is simply too terrible to admit: it tells man that he is a small, trembling animal who will decay and die. Illusion changes all this, makes man seem important, vital to the universe, immortal in some way. Who transmits this illusion, if not the parents by imparting the macro-lie of the cultural causa sui? The masses look to the leaders to give them just the untruth that they need; the leader continues the illusions and magnifies them into a truly heroic victory. Furthermore, he makes possible a new experience, the expression of forbidden impulses, secret wishes, and fantasies. In group behavior anything goes because the leader okays it. In the group each man seems an omnipotent hero who can give full vent to his appetites under the approving eye of the father."

"Longing for being hypnotized"

"It is not so much that man is a herd animal, said Freud, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief. It is this alone that can explain the "uncanny and coercive characteristics of group formations." The chief is a "dangerous personality, toward whom only a passive-masochistic attitude is possible, to whom one's will has to be surrendered,—while to be alone with him, 'to look him in the face,' appears a hazardous enterprise." This alone, says Freud, explains the "paralysis" that exists in the link between a person with inferior power to one of superior power. Man has "an extreme passion for authority" and "wishes to be governed by unrestricted force. It is this trait that the leader hypnotically embodies in his own masterful person. Or as Fenichel later put it, people have a "longing for being hypnotized" precisely because they want to get back to the magical protection, the participation in omnipotence, the "oceanic feeling" that they enjoyed when they were loved and protected ie by their parents. For Freud, this was the life force that held groups together. It functioned as a kind of psychic cement that locked people into mutual and mindless interdependence: the magnetic powers of the leader, reciprocated by the guilty delegation of everyone's will to him."

They simply became dependent children again

"Early theorists of group psychology had tried to explain why men were so sheep-like when they functioned in groups. They developed ideas like "mental contagion" and "herd instinct," which became very popular. But as Freud was quick to see, these ideas never really did explain what men did with their judgment and common sense when they got caught up in groups. Freud saw right away what they did with it: they simply became dependent children again, blindly following the inner voice of their parents, which now came to them under the hypnotic spell of the leader. They abandoned their egos to his, identified with his power, tried to function with him as an ideal."

The need to be subject to someone

"The need to be subject to someone remains: only the part of the father is transferred to teachers, superiors, impressive personalities; the submissive loyalty to rulers that is so wide-spread is also a transference of this sort."
~ Ferenczi

Must hide ... the ... truth.

. . . men, incapable of liberty— who cannot stand the terror of the sacred that manifests itself before their open eyes—must turn to mystery, must hide ... the ... truth.
—Carlo Levi

Mind is only a little bit of nature

"Now there is certainly something special about mind, so little is known about it and its relation to nature. I personally have a vast respect for mind, but has nature? Mind is only a little bit of nature, the rest of which seems to be able to get along very well without it. Will it really allow itself to be influenced to any great extent by regard for mind?"
~ Freud

Belief has to absorb man's basic terror

"Nature seems unconcerned, even viciously antagonistic to human meanings; and we fight by trying to bring our own dependable meanings into the world. But human meanings are fragile, ephemeral: they are constantly being discredited by historical events and natural calamities. One Hitler can efface centuries of scientific and religious meanings; one earthquake can negate a million times the meaning of a personal life. Mankind has reacted by trying to secure human meanings from beyond. Man's best efforts seem utterly fallible without appeal to something higher for justification, some conceptual support for the meaning of one's life from a transcendental dimension of some kind. As this belief has to absorb man's basic terror, it cannot be merely abstract but must be rooted in the emotions, in an inner feeling that one is secure in something stronger, larger, more important than one's own strength and life."

Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me

Lord Russell tells us that he once received a letter from a well-known logician, a Mrs. Franklin, admitting that she was herself a solipsist and was surprised that no one else was. Russell comments: “Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me.”
~ J. Miller

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.
~ Albert Camus

Or you shall learn nothing

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
~ T. H. Huxley

Philosopher and his students

The philosopher does sometimes get so interested in his technique that he forgets the human interest that may have first led him and his students to philosophy; the student suffers from impatience to get to the main point. Some philosophers are like pianists who play only scales; on the other hand some students are like beginners in music who are so anxious to play Beethoven that they resent having to learn scales.
~ Lewis White Beck

To watch a man who doesn’t know what to do with the incomprehensible

It is a terrible thing, Tolstoi said, to watch a man who doesn’t know what to do with the incomprehensible, because generally he winds up playing with a toy named God. Pasteur saw nothing particularly terrifying or unsatisfying about this situation, saying that the only thing to do in the face of the incomprehensible is to kneel before it. But that which is most incomprehensible of all is not a distant planet but the human mind it- self; kneeling under these circumstances may represent the ultimate vanity.
~ Norman Cousins

The major part of every meaningful life

The major part of every meaningful life is the solution of problems.
~ Paul Halmos

You must also be right

Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment, you must also be right.
~ Robert Park

An idea once born never dies

An idea once born never dies. It may grow feeble under the battering of other ideas. It may gather dust upon some library shelf. But sooner or later some- one is going to shake off that dust and look at the forgotten idea once again. And lo and behold! here precisely is what he has been searching for these many years.
~ T. K. Mahadevan

The crimes of nonconformity

The trial of Socrates represents something more than a mere historical event that could not possibly happen again. The trial of Socrates is a charge leveled at the type of intellectual questioning that seeks out the true problems lying outside everyday mediocrity. When Socrates tormented the Athenians like a gadfly, he prevented them from sleeping peacefully, from relaxing with their ready-made solutions to moral and social problems. By astonishing us, Socrates prevents us from thinking along the old lines that have been handed down to us and have become habits. Thus Socrates stands at the very opposite end of the scale from intellectual well-being, easy conscience, and beatific serenity. For all who think that the evidence of authority ought to prevail over the authority of evidence, that order and stability can-not permit the crimes of nonconformity and “lèse-société,” Socrates could only have been the enemy.
~ Jean Brun - Socrates

The unexamined life is not worth living

Men of Athens, I know and love you, but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of Philosophy.… I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.… I tell you that to do as you say would be a disobedience to God, and therefore I cannot hold my tongue. Daily to discourse about virtue, and about those other things about which you hear me examining myself and others is the greatest good of man. The unexamined life is not worth living.… In another world I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge.… In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not.
~ Plato - The Apology

Problems we cannot solve

The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level at which we created them.
~ Albert Einstein

All thought is anthropomorphic

Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal.… The truism “All thought is anthropomorphic” has no other meaning. Likewise, the mind that aims to understand reality can consider itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought.
~ Albert Camus

When we are thinking we are not experiencing outside ourselves

Eastern and Western epistemology are united in reminding us that when we are thinking we are not experiencing outside ourselves.
~ William W. Blake

But the theory that shall interpret them is manmade

Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.… The sense-experiences are the given subject-matter. But the theory that shall interpret them is manmade.… hypothetical, never completely final, subject to question and doubt.
~ Albert Einstein

It is much easier to bury a problem than to solve it

It is much easier to bury a problem than to solve it.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away

“Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”
 ~ Hermann Minkowski - In one of the first public lectures on special relativity,

He delights in it because it is beautiful

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course I do not here speak of that beauty that strikes the senses, the beauty of qualities and appearances; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.
~ Henri Poincaré

A collection of facts is no more a science

‘Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.’
~ Henri Poincaré

The great tragedy of Science

‘The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.’
~ Thomas Huxley

Nature isn’t that complicated

‘If you see a formula in the Physical Review that extends over a quarter of a page, forget it. It’s wrong. Nature isn’t that complicated.’
~ Berndt Matthias

The physicist in preparing for his work needs three things

‘The physicist in preparing for his work needs three things: mathematics, mathematics and mathematics.’
~ Wilhelm Röntgen

Physics is not a religion

Physics is not a religion. If it were, we’d have a much easier time raising money.
~ LEON LEDERMA

Living on Earth may be expensive

Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
~ ANONYMOUS

I do not feel obliged to believe that

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
~ GALILEO GALILEI

Science must begin with myths

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
~ KARL POPPER

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
~ ALBERT EINSTEIN

Something that no one ever knew before

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.
~ PAUL DIRAC

The effort to understand the universe

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
~ STEVEN WEINBERG

The cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars

Place three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars.
~ JAMES JEANS

How deep is time?

How deep is time? How far down into the life of matter do we have to go before we understand what time is?
 —Don DeLillo, Underworld

Particles communicate with each other by way of invisible fields

"Everything that we can see and touch is made up of indivisible particles. These particles communicate with each other by way of invisible fields that permeate all of space the way air fills a room. Fields are not made of atoms; they have no smallest unit. The particles determine where the fields will be stronger or weaker, and the fields tell the particles how to move."

One sentence passed on to the next generation

If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis... that all things are made of atoms—tittle particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.
 —Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion”
~ Francis Bacon

There is not a philosophical method

There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Instead of knocking ourselves out trying to become popular

"Along these lines, Musonius observes, that the time and energy people expend on illicit love affairs far outweighs the time and energy it would take them, as practicing Stoics, to develop the self-control required to avoid such affairs. Musonius goes on to suggest that we would also be better off if, instead of working hard to become wealthy, we trained ourselves to be satisfied with what we have; if, instead of seeking fame, we overcame our craving for the admiration of others; if, instead of spending time scheming to harm someone we envy, we spent that time overcoming our feelings of envy; and if, instead of knocking ourselves out trying to become popular, we worked to maintain and improve our relationships with those we knew to be true friends."

“Let us go to Aricia then and dine.”

"When someone reported to Paconius that he was being tried in the Senate, Paconius was uninterested; he merely set off for his daily exercise and bath. When he was informed that he had been condemned, he asked whether it was to banishment or death. “To banishment,” came the reply. He then asked whether his property at Aricia had also been confiscated, and when he was told that it hadn’t, he replied, “Let us go to Aricia then and dine.”"

I shall despise riches

“I shall despise riches alike when I have them and when I have them not, being neither cast down if they shall lie elsewhere, nor puffed up if they shall glitter around me.”
~ Seneca

He who knows contentment

“He who knows contentment is rich.”
~ Lao Tzu

The truly rich man

“The man who adapts himself to his slender means and makes himself wealthy on a little sum, is the truly rich man.”
~ Seneca

Luxury uses her wit to promote vices

"Luxury, Seneca warns, uses her wit to promote vices: First she makes us want things that are inessential, then she makes us want things that are injurious. Before long, the mind becomes slave to the body’s whims and pleasures."

The most difficult of all pleasures to combat

“The pleasure connected with food is undoubtedly the most difficult of all pleasures to combat.”
~ Musonius

To desire so much when you can hold so little

"Is it not madness and the wildest lunacy to desire so much when you can hold so little?”
~ Seneca

Interrogations for which an answer must be sought

The things which exist around us, which we touch, see, hear and taste, are regarded as interrogations for which an answer must be sought.
~ John Dewey

Never accept a fact

Never accept a fact until it is verified by a theory!
~ Sir Arthur Eddington

The teacher’s obligation is to be patient

The teacher’s obligation is to be patient enough to permit deliberation and decision by each of those he is trying to help. If his students do not choose, each in the light of his own contingent existence and his own limitations, they will not become ethical beings; if they are not ethical beings—in search of their own ethical reality—they are not individuals; if they are not individuals, they will not learn.
~ Søren Kierkegaard - The Point of View

“Confusion” is an initial phase of all knowledge

“Confusion” is an initial phase of all knowledge, without which one cannot progress to clarity.The important thing for the individual who truly desires to think is that he not be overly hurried but be faithful at each step of his mental itinerary to the aspect of reality currently under view, that he strive to avoid disdain for the preliminary distant and con- fused aspects due to some snob sense of urgency impelling him to arrive immediately at the more refined conclusions.

~ José Ortega y Gasset - The Origin of Philosophy

What matters is to leave off crawling in the dust

Philosophy, as Plato and Aristotle said, begins in wonder. This wonder means a dim awareness of the useless talent, some sense that antlikeness is a betrayal.…

Philosophy means liberation from the two dimensions of routine, soaring above the well known, seeing it in new perspectives, arousing wonder and the wish to fly. Philosophy subverts man’s satisfaction with himself, exposes custom as a questionable dream, and offers not so much solutions as a different life.

A great deal of philosophy, including truly subtle and ingenious works, was not intended as an edifice for men to live in, safe from sun and wind, but as a challenge: don’t sleep on! there are so many vantage points; they change in flight: what matters is to leave off crawling in the dust.

~ Walter Kaufmann - Critique of Religion and Philosophy

We are bad men living among bad men

“We are bad men living among bad men, and only one thing can calm us—we must agree to go easy on one another.”
~ Seneca

Reason will never enlist the aid of reckless unbridled impulses

“Reason will never enlist the aid of reckless unbridled impulses over which it has no authority.”
~ Seneca

The desire for friendship comes quickly

‘The desire for friendship comes quickly. Friendship does not.’
~ Aristotle

The man who drinks in all that life offers

"The man who seeks to escape life drinks to get drunk, unlike the man who drinks in all that life offers in his search for wisdom."

But it does buy a more pleasant form of misery

‘Money can’t buy you happiness but it does buy a more pleasant form of misery.’
~ Spike Milligan

Freedom and slavery are mental states

‘Freedom and slavery are mental states.’
~ Gandhi

When you know all the answers

When you know all the answers, you haven’t asked all the questions.
~ Harold Levitt

History is the story of the defiance of the unknown

History is the story of the defiance of the unknown and of what happens when man tries to extend his reach. Such defiance is necessary because conventional wisdom has never been good enough to run a civilization.
~ Norman Cousins

One can’t believe impossible things

“There’s no use trying,” said Alice: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
~ Lewis Carroll

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
~ Epictetus

Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term “Philosophy"

Pythagoras was the first person who invented the term “Philosophy,” and who called himself a philosopher.
~ Diogenes Laërtius

If the only tool you have is a hammer

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail.
~ Abraham Maslow

I’d rather be myself than be at the top

The General shook his head. “You’ve been out of school all these years, and what have you learned? Don’t you know raw ability will never take you to the top?”

“I’d rather be myself than be at the top,” said Beller. “I like to know what I think when I go to bed at night.”
~ Christopher Anvil

All philosophy begins with astonishment and wonder

All philosophy begins—as the ancient Greeks so well knew— with astonishment and wonder.
~ Kurt Reinhardt

Think or believe

It began when I was in the fifth grade. I came home from school one day, and my mother said to me, “What did you do in school today—think or believe?”
~ Ralph Nader

Men began to philosophize to escape ignorance

A sense of wonder started men philosophizing, in ancient times as well as today. Their wondering is aroused, first, by trivial matters; but they continue on from there to wonder about less mundane matters such as the changes of the moon, sun, and stars, and the beginnings of the universe. What is the result of this puzzlement? An awesome feeling of ignorance. Men began to philosophize, therefore, to escape ignorance.
~ Aristotle

This is the end of our comrade

“This is the end of our comrade a man, as we would say, of all then living we had ever met, the noblest and the wisest and the most just.”
~ Plato

Not to be worthy of my sufferings

"There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."
~ Dostoevski

I myself know nothing

I myself know nothing, except just a little, enough to extract an argument from another man who is wise and to receive it fairly.
~ Socrates

While I am still in ignorance about my own nature

I’ve not yet succeeded in obeying the Delphic injunction to “know myself,” and it seems to me absurd to consider problems about other beings while I am still in ignorance about my own nature.
~ Socrates

Self-ignorance is a misfortune

Self-ignorance in any of its manifestations [is] a misfortune.
~ Socrates

Socrates prevents us from thinking along the old lines

When Socrates tormented the Athenians like a gadfly, he prevented them from sleeping peacefully, from relaxing with their ready-made solutions to moral and social problems. By astonishing us, Socrates prevents us from thinking along the old lines that have been handed down to us and have become habits.
~ Jean Brun

Are you not ashamed at heaping up the greatest amount of money

Are you not ashamed at heaping up the greatest amount of money and prestige and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?
~ Socrates

I do the things that I hate

“I do the things that I hate.… I do not do the good things that I want to do; I do the wrong things that I do not want to do.”
~ Saint Paul

I was really too honest a man to be a politician

As a midwife, I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labor, and not after their bodies; and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.
~ Socrates

How many things I don’t need

“How many things I don’t need!”
~ Socrates

I ask questions of others but have not the wit to answer them myself

 “The reproach which is often made against me—that I ask questions of others but have not the wit to answer them myself—is very just. The reason is that god compels me to be a midwife, but forbids me to bring forth.”
~ Socrates

To be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
~ Krishnamurti

Just in order to become a child again

I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin a new.
~ Hermann Hesse - Siddhartha

A community of seekers

To my way of thinking, a college is a community of seekers—a community of those devoted not solely to the appreciation and preservation of the past, but dedicated to the discovery of greater truth. It is a community of those who do not believe that all truth has been found in any area—who refuse to invest any particular statement, book, creed, institution, or person with infallibility. It should be a community of those who are completely dedicated to the best that they know but believe that there is a better-to-be-known in all areas. Persons in such a community should be doubters and sceptics in the sense that they suspend judgment and question all assumptions and conclusions, so that each one will be forced to justify itself before the bar of critical analysis. Such attitudes are never apt to win friends or to influence people among that segment of society that believes that it has the truth.
~ Dr. Bert Williams

They can tolerate the ambiguous

Our healthy subjects are uniformly unthreatened and unfrightened by the unknown, being therein quite different from average men. They accept the unknown, they are comfortable with it, and often are even attracted by it. To use Frenkel-Brunswick’s phrase, “they can tolerate the ambiguous.” … Since for healthy people, the unknown is not frightening, they do not have to spend any time laying the ghost, whistling past the cemetery, or otherwise protecting them- selves against danger. They do not neglect the unknown, or deny it, or run away from it, or try to make believe it really is known, nor do they organize, dichotomize, or rubricize it prematurely. They do not cling to the familiar, nor is their quest for truth a catastrophic need for certainty, for safety, for definiteness, and order. The fully functioning personality can be, when the objective situation calls for it, comfortably disorderly, anarchic, vague, doubtful, uncertain, indefinite, approximate, inexact, or inaccurate.
~ Abraham Maslow

The salvation of man is through love and in love

"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."

When reality is more horrible than nightmares

"I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible night- mare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him."

A blow which does not even find its mark

"Strangely enough, a blow which does not even find its mark can, under certain circumstances, hurt more than one that finds its mark. Once I was standing on a railway track in a snowstorm. In spite of the weather our party had to keep on working. I worked quite hard at mending the track with gravel, since that was the only way to keep warm. For only one moment I paused to get my breath and to lean on my shovel. Unfortunately the guard turned around just then and thought I was loafing. The pain he caused me was not from any insults or any blows. That guard did not think it worth his while to say anything, not even a swear word, to the ragged, emaciated figure standing before him, which probably reminded him only vaguely of a human form. Instead, he playfully picked up a stone and threw it at me. That, to me, seemed the way to attract the attention of a beast, to call a domestic animal back to its job, a creature with which you have so little in common that you do not even punish it."

There are things which must cause you to lose your reason

"There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose."

I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps

"Inch by inch I conquered the inner terrain I was born with. Bit by bit I reclaimed the swamp in which I’d languished. I gave birth to my infinite being, but I had to wrench myself out of me with forceps."

Absolute conviction

Absolute conviction, whether about ourselves, about others, or about any belief, is at the root of all human evil.
~ Richard Moss, M.D.

The weight of undisputed authority

The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.
~ Paul Tillich

When belief and its securities have to be left behind

 “Almost all the spiritual traditions recognize that there is a stage in man’s development when belief—in contrast to faith—and its securities have to be left behind.”
~ Alan Watts

Flight from insecurity

“Flight from insecurity is catastrophic to any kind of human growth. To flee from insecurity is to miss the whole point of being human.”
~ Peter Bertocci

A clean sweep of formerly held opinions

Some years ago I came to realize that from my youth onwards I had been accepting as true many opinions that were really false, and that consequently the beliefs which I based upon such infirm grounds must themselves be doubtful and uncertain. Thereupon I became convinced that I need to make, once in my life, a clean sweep of my formerly held opinions and to begin to rebuild from the bottom up, if I wished to establish some kind of firm and assured way of thinking in the sciences. Today then … I shall apply myself earnestly and freely to the task of eradicating all of my formerly held opinions. To this end it will not be necessary to show that the old opinions are false.… Rather, since my reason persuades me that I ought to withhold belief from whatever is not entirely certain and indubitable, quite as much as from what is manifestly false, I shall be sufficiently justified in rejecting any belief if only I can find in each case some reason to doubt it.
~ René Descartes - Meditations

Mind; which also sees what might be

How could the body’s eye, which sees only what is, ever match the mind’s, which also sees what might be?
~ Robert Kaplan/Ellen Kaplan

The confusion of faith with belief

The most ordinary misinterpretation of faith is to consider it an act of knowledge that has a low degree of evidence.… If this is meant, one is speaking of belief rather than of faith.… Almost all the struggles between faith and knowledge are rooted in the wrong understanding of faith as a type of knowledge which has a low degree of evidence but is supported by religious authority. One of the worst errors of theology and popular religion is to make statements which intentionally or unintentionally contradict the structure of reality. Such an attitude is an expression not of faith but of the confusion of faith with belief.
~ Paul Tillich

At that moment doubt, not belief, is the greater virtue

When identification with any idea about God sets our hearts and actions against other human beings whose conceptualizations are different from our own, at that moment doubt, not belief, is the greater virtue.
~ Richard Moss, M.D.

That is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed

“I have said some things of which I am not altogether confident. But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to inquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know—that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.”
~ Socrates

Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of toads

Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of toads to find the real prince.
~ Bumper sticker

By inquiry we discover the truth

 “For by doubting we come to inquiry, by inquiry we discover the truth.”
~ Peter Abelard (1079–1142)

Life is not a problem to be solved

Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.
~ Joseph Campbell

We have to live it awake

Dream or nightmare, we have to live our experience as it is, and we have to live it awake. We live in a world which is penetrated through and through by science and which is both whole and real. We cannot turn it into a game simply by taking sides.
—JACOB BRONOWSKI

The mainspring which has moved our civilization

The sanction of experienced fact as a face of truth is a profound subject, and the mainspring which has moved our civilization since the Renaissance.
—JACOB BRONOWSKI

Nirvana is nothingness

“Nirvana is nothingness.”
~ Christopher Hitchens

I’m just looking to find out more about the world

People say to me, “Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?” No, I’m not. I’m just looking to find out more about the world, and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law that explains everything, so be it. That would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers, and we’re sick and tired of looking at layers, then that’s the way it is . . . My interest in science is to simply find out more about the world, and the more I find out, the better it is. I like to find out.
~ Richard Feynman

A sharp mind that only destroys me

"Besides, what can I expect from myself? My sensations in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling… A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained… A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child…"

What is there to confess

"What is there to confess that’s worthwhile or useful? What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only to us; if to everyone, then it’s no novelty, and if only to us, then it won’t be understood. If I write what I feel, it’s to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant. I make landscapes out of what I feel. I make holidays of my sensations. I can easily understand women who embroider out of sorrow or who crochet because life exists."

a well staring at the sky

"We are two abysses – a well staring at the sky."

Everything in me tends to go on to become something else

"Futile and sensitive, I’m capable of violent and consuming impulses – both good and bad, noble and vile – but never of a sentiment that endures, never of an emotion that continues, entering into the substance of my soul. Everything in me tends to go on to become something else. My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while."

Nothing is worth a human soul’s love

"I love all this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love, and perhaps also because nothing is worth a human soul’s love, and so it’s all the same – should we feel the urge to give it."

You’re being exploited

"Deeming that I earn too little, a friend of mine who’s a partner in a successful firm that does a lot of business with the government said the other day: ‘You’re being exploited, Soares.’ And I remembered that indeed I am. But since in life we must all be exploited, I wonder if it’s any worse to be exploited by Vasques and his fabrics than by vanity, by glory, by resentment, by envy or by the impossible."

I asked for very little from life

"I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me – this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we’re mean-hearted but because we don’t feel like unbuttoning our coat."

By day I am nothing, and by night I am I

"Walking on these streets, until the night falls, my life feels to me like the life they have. By day they’re full of meaningless activity; by night they’re full of a meaningless lack of it. By day I am nothing, and by night I am I. There is no difference between me and these streets."

Dreaming, which my intelligence hates

"I have to choose what I detest – either dreaming, which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action, for which I wasn’t born, or dreaming, for which no one was born.

Detesting both, I choose neither; but since I must on occasion either dream or act, I mix the two things together."

I softly sing – for myself alone

"I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don’t know where it will take me, because I don’t know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I’m compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social centre, for it’s here that I meet others. But I’m neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlours, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I’m sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colours and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing – for myself alone – wispy songs I compose while waiting."

Those who hope for nothing

"Those who hope for nothing because it’s perfectly useless to hope."

The suffering that comes from having already suffered a lot

"The suffering born of the indifference that comes from having already suffered a lot."

People who are on the journey are a lot more interesting

People who are on the journey are a lot more interesting than people who, having found answers, are in dry dock.
~ Lori Villamil

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.
~ Montaigne

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas and one’s axioms.
~ Will Durant

It dissolves when desired too desperately

"But this sort of wisdom [philosophical] is elusive. It dissolves when desired too desperately, and in times of need it can become paralyzed. Wisdom is not unlike the Tao: if defined too precisely, it will lose its essence; if sought too diligently, it will be missed."

Life is filled with cruel contradictions and bitter ironies

“To sensitive spirits of all ages, life is filled with cruel contradictions and bitter ironies.”

Don’t act as if you are going to live ten thousand years

 “Don’t act as if you are going to live ten thousand years. Death always hangs over you. While you are alive and while it is still in your power, be good.”
~ Marcus Aurelius

Observe the world passing by

“This then remains — remember to retire into this little territory of the inner self—your own world (which is all there is)—and there be free, and, as a human being, observe the world passing by.”
~ Marcus Aurelius

Set of four virtues

"Marcus organized his practice into a set of four virtues which he never stopped practicing. Wisdom—learn what is good and bad, which involvements are beneficial and which are damaging, which concerns are ennobling and which are degrading. Justice—exercise honesty and fairness so that you can always respect yourself; do not be arrogant, thinking you are more than you are; but do not think less of yourself either, thinking you are worth nothing. Fortitude—develop the strength to withstand courageously “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Shakespeare later phrased it. And temperance—develop control of one’s passions, resist excesses, and learn to strike a balance in all of life."

Do you see me unhappy

“Do you see me unhappy because thus-and-so has happened to me? Not at all. Rather, I am happy despite its happening to me. Why? Because I continue on, free from pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearing the future. For events such as this happen to every human being.”
~ Marcus Aurelius

Men seek all sorts of escape for themselves

 “Men seek all sorts of escape for themselves—houses in the country, by the seashores, in the mountains; and you too will probably want such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men.”
~ Marcus Aurelius