Famous Quotes & Sayings

Baruch Spinoza

Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

Baruch Spinoza

I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.

Baruch Spinoza

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

Baruch Spinoza

Desire is the very essence of man

Baruch Spinoza

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Baruch Spinoza

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

Baruch Spinoza

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.

Baruch Spinoza

I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature

Baruch Spinoza

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

Baruch Spinoza

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

Baruch Spinoza

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Baruch Spinoza

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Aulus Gellius

I see the beard and cloak, but I don't yet see a philosopher. -Video barbam et pallium; philosophum nondum video

Augustine Birrell

History is a pageant and not a philosophy.

Auguste Comte

The word right should be excluded from political language, as the word cause from the language of philosophy.

Auguste Comte

Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?

Auguste Comte

Monotheism occupies so large a space in the view of modern minds, that it is scarcely possible to form a just estimate of the preceding phases of the theological philosophy.

Arthur Koestler

As modern physics started with the Newtonian revolution, so modern philosophy starts with what one might call the Cartesian Catastrophe. The catastrophe consisted in the splitting up of the world into the realms of matter and mind, and the identification of 'mind' with conscious thinking. The result of this identification was the shallow rationalism of l' esprit Cartesien, and an impoverishment of psychology which it took three centuries to remedy even in part.

Arthur Koestler

I profoundly admire Aldous Huxley, both for his philosophy and uncompromising sincerity. But I disagree with his advocacy of 'the chemical opening of doors into the Other World', and with his belief that drugs can procure 'what Catholic theologians call a gratuitous grace'. Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system.

Art Linkletter

My philosophy is to do the best you can for somebody. Help. It's not just what do you for yourself. It's how you treat people decently. The golden rule. There isn't big anything better than the golden rule. It's in every major religion in one language or another.

Ayelet Waldman

Those of us whose parenting style can be described as "a series of reflexes, instincts, and minute-by-minute adjustments," as Julie of A Little Pregnant puts it, rather than as a philosophy, are less invested in our own practices. What we do is often less a matter of conviction than one of convenience. What we need to remember is that there is no need to apologize for that, even in the face of the most red-faced outrage.

Charles Fort

I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while.

Edward Abbey

In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy.

Edward Abbey

Every man has two vocations: his own and philosophy.

Edward Abbey

Nothing could be more reckless than to base one's moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science.

Edward Abbey

Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.

Edward Abbey

An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.

Edward Abbey

Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime.

Aristotle

For even they who compose treatises of medicine or natural philosophy in verse are denominated Poets: yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre; the former, therefore, justly merits the name of the Poet; while the other should rather be called a Physiologist than a Poet.

Aristotle

The life of theoretical philosophy is the best and happiest a man can lead. Few men are capable of it and then only intermittently. For the rest there is a second-best way of life, that of moral virtue and practical wisdom.

Aristotle

But also philosophy is not about perceptible substances they, you see, are prone to destruction.

Aristotle

For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.

Aristotle

A man who examines each subject from a philosophical standpoint cannot neglect them: he has to omit nothing, and state the truth about each topic.