Famous Quotes & Sayings

Maxim Gorky

The intelligentsia ...was kept busy embroidering white stitches on the philosophical and ecclesiastical vestments of the bourgeoisie - that old and filthy fabric besmeared with the blood of toiling masses.

Max Stirner

For what reason then do the realists show themselves so unfriendly toward philosophy? Because they misunderstand their own calling and with all their might want to remain restricted instead of becoming unrestricted! Why do they hate abstractions? Because they themselves are abstract since they abstract from the perfection of themselves, from the elevation of redeeming truth!

Max Black

No doubt metaphors are dangerous- and perhaps especially so in philosophy. But a prohibition against their use would be a willful and harmful restriction upon our powers of inquiry.

Max Born

If alpha [the fine-structure constant] were bigger than it really is, we should not be able to distinguish matter from ether [the vacuum, nothingness], and our task to disentangle the natural laws would be hopelessly difficult. The fact however that alpha has just its value 1/137 is certainly no chance but itself a law of nature. It is clear that the explanation of this number must be the central problem of natural philosophy.

Max Born

I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.

Max Born

I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Even those who have desired to work out a completely positive philosophy have been philosophers only to the extent that, at the same time, they have refused the right to install themselves in absolute knowledge. They taught not this knowledge, but its becoming in us, not the absolute but, at most, our absolute relation to it, as Kierkegaard said. What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Thinking which displaces, or otherwise defines, the sacred has been called atheistic, and that philosophy which does not place it here or there, like a thing, but at the joining of things and words, will always be exposed to this reproach without ever being touched by it.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

The philosopher will ask himself ... if the criticism we are now suggesting is not the philosophy which presses to the limit that criticism of false gods which Christianity has introduced into our history.

Marina Warner

I always have done work on mythic relations since I started writing. I really want to be a novelist, or at least a writer of imaginative work... I do try to make my critical studies imaginative and try to write them in ways that are more like literature than philosophy, but I have disappointed myself because I am still so wedded to criticism.

Marilynne Robinson

Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I'm attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity.

Maria Montessori

We cannot create observers by saying 'observe,' but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.

Patricia Heaton

I find it impossible to subscribe to a philosophy that believes that the destruction of human life is a legitimate solution to a problem that is mostly social, economic and psychological,... In reality, most women 'choose' abortion because they believe they have no other choice.

Plato

Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this.

Plato

There is no other start to philosophy but wonder.

Plato

What is at issue is the conversion of the mind from the twilight of error to the truth, that climb up into the real world which we shall call true philosophy.

Plato

There is a ... matter - much more valuable and divine than natural philosophy . ... On this matter I must speak to you in enigmas.

Plato

The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

Plato

Geometry will draw the soul toward truth and create the spirit of philosophy.

Plato

...there are some who are naturally fitted for philosophy and political leadership, while the rest should follow their lead and let philosophy alone.

Plato

Philosophy begins in wonder.

Phil Keoghan

There was some expiration point to my life, and it became very important to maximize the time that I did have on Earth. That's what led me to my personal philosophy: "No Opportunity Wasted" - NOW for short, which is about living life to the fullest.

Lee Atwater

Perception is reality.

Peter Diamandis

I have the general philosophy of creating the future you want to see.

Marlon Brando

Hey, you wanna hear my philosophy of life? Do it to him before he does it to you.

Marisha Pessl

May you walk a lighted path. May you fight for truth - your truth, not someone else's - and may you understand, above all things, that you are the most important concept, theory, and philosophy I have ever known.

Maria Sharapova

When I come into a tournament, I'm expecting to win. That's my philosophy. I can't go to a tournament thinking, 'I'm going to get my ass kicked today, so I might as well leave.'

Meat Loaf

We carry the flame for all to see, the fire and passion of what we can be.

Meat Loaf

Life is a lemon and I want my money back.

Meat Loaf

You can lose yourself in pleasure, 'til your body's going numb, but will it ever be enough.

Meat Loaf

Who am I, why am I here? Forget the question, someone give me another beer.

Max Muller

The gospel is the fulfillment of all hopes, the perfection of all philosophy, the interpretation of all revelation, the key to all the seeming contradictions of the physical and moral world.