philosophybits

[philosophybits]

“Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

[philosophybits]

Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot.

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

#philosophy #quotes #Oscar Wilde #The Soul of Man Under Socialism #possessions #wealth #property #money #perfection #self #character #virtue #ethics

[philosophybits]

“The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfill the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.”

— Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

[philosophybits]

At the present time there still exist many doctrines which choose to leave in the shadow certain troubling aspects of a too complex situation. But their attempt to lie to us is in vain. Cowardice doesn’t pay. Those reasonable metaphysics, those consoling ethics with which they would like to entice us only accentuate the disorder from which we suffer. Men of today seem to feel more acutely than ever the paradox of their condition. They know themselves to be the supreme end to which all action should be subordinated, but the exigencies of action force them to treat one another as instruments or obstacles, as means. The more widespread their mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by uncontrollable forces.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

#philosophy #quotes #Simone de Beauvoir #The Ethics of Ambiguity #cowardice #honesty #freedom #oppression #instrumentalism #ideology #ethics #metaphysics

[philosophybits]

“Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already ennobled when he takes it up.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections

[philosophybits]

Thought can in an instant transport us into the most distant regions of the universe; or even beyond the universe, into the unbounded chaos, where nature is supposed to lie in total confusion.

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

#philosophy #quotes #David Hume #An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding #thought #thinking #mind #imagination

[philosophybits]

“Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.”

— Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

[philosophybits]

False universality is what rubs the edges off all individual kinds of culture and takes as its basis the mediocre average. With true universality, on the other hand, art, for example, would become even more artificial than it is in its pure state, poetry would become more poetical, criticism more critical, history more historical, and so on. This universality can come into being when the simple light of religion and morality touches a chaos of combinative wit and fertilizes it. Then the most sublime poetry and philosophy burst into flower by themselves.

Friedrich Schlegel, Ideas

#philosophy #quotes #Friedrich Schlegel #Ideas #universality #art #poetry #eternal #ultimate #sublime

[philosophybits]

“Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (2.14)

[philosophybits]

A man when drunk is led by a boy, stumbling and not knowing where he goes, since his soul is wet. A ray of light the dry soul, wisest and best.

Heraclitus, Fragments, B117 & B118

#philosophy #quotes #Heraclitus #Fragments #intoxication #drunkenness #wisdom

[philosophybits]

“The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.”

— Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

[philosophybits]

“Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?”

— Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

[philosophybits]

“It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.”

— Aristotle, Poetics

[philosophybits]

Men respond only faintly to the horrors that take place around them, except at moments, when the savage, crying incongruity and ghastliness of our condition suddenly reveals itself vivid before our eyes, and we are forced to know what we are. Then the ground slides away from under our feet.

Lev Shestov, All Things Are Possible

#philosophy #quotes #Lev Shestov #All Things Are Possible #suffering #misery #pain #awareness

[philosophybits]

“Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.”

— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

[philosophybits]

The Way has its reality and its signs but is without action or form. You can hand it down, but you cannot receive it; you can get it, but you cannot see it. It is its own source, its own root. Before Heaven and earth existed, it was there, firm from ancient times. It gave spirituality to the spirits and to God; it gave birth to Heaven and to earth. It exists beyond the highest point, and yet you cannot call it lofty; it exists beneath the limit of the six directions, and yet you cannot call it deep. It was born before Heaven and earth, and yet you cannot say it has been there for long; it is earlier than the earliest time, and yet you cannot call it old.

Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, Watson tr. (Ch 6)

#philosophy #quotes #Zhuangzi #The Complete Works of Zhuangzi #nonaction #nondistinction #daoism

[philosophybits]

“Philosophizing is: rejecting false arguments.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951