Famous Quotes & Sayings

Wendell Willkie

I am not interested in the support of anybody who stands for any form of prejudice as to anybody's race or religion. . . . I have no place in my philosophy for such beliefs.

W. Somerset Maugham

The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Zadie Smith

It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy

Manly Hall

Philosophy is the science of estimating values. The superiority of any state or substance over another is determined by philosophy. By assigning a position of primary importance to what remains when all that is secondary has been removed, philosophy thus becomes the true index of priority or emphasis in the realm of speculative thought.

Friedrich August von Hayek

The task of the political philosopher can only be to influence public opinion, not to organize people for action. He will do so effectively only if he is not concerned with what is now politically possible but consistently defends the "general principles which are always the same." In this sense I doubt whether there can be such a thing as a conservative political philosophy. Conservatism may often be a useful practical maxim, but it does not give us any guiding principles which can influence long-range developments.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy hasn't made any progress? - If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn't genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching itching? And can't this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered?

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.

Toni Morrison

Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.

Ricardo Montalban

If you shake your fist, the other guy will shake his too. But if you extend your hand to shake their hand, then they will extend theirs also, and you've made a friend.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I had learned to dwell with pleasure as a beloved daydream on the thought of the separation of these elements. If each I told myself could be housed in separate identities life would be relieved of all that was unbearable the unjust might go his way delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path doing the good things in which he found his pleasure and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.

Sarah Dessen

I looked down again at the sign in my hand - ENJOY THE RIDE! - and it seemed, suddenly, to be just that. A sign.

Voltaire

History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction.

William Standish Knowles

I was one who liked to work with my hands as well as my brain.

William Styron

I thought there's something to be said for honor in this world where there doesn't seem to be any honor left. I thought that maybe happiness wasn't really anything more than the knowledge of a life well spent, in spite of whatever immediate discomfort you had to undergo, and that if a life well spent meant compromises and conciliations and reconciliations, and suffering at the hands of the person you love, well then better that than live without honor.

William Powell

There is only one purpose in hand-to-hand combat, and that is to kill. Never face an enemy with the idea of knocking him out. The chances are extremely good that he will kill you.

William Powell

I can fully appreciate the fury and anger that a person can feel when put through a humiliating experience by a cop, but I would recommend strongly that a person maintain his cool, and in no circumstances lose his temper. If you lose your temper, you are playing right into the cop's hands.

John Banville

The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.

Bruce Beehler

There was not a single trail, no sign of civilization, no sign of even local communities ever having been there.

David Mitchell

Freedom!- is the fatuous jingle of our civilization, but only those deprived of it have the barest inkling re: what the stuff actually is.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

This was life! Ah, how he loved it! Civilization held nothing like this in its narrow and circumscribed sphere, hemmed in by restrictions and conventionalities. Even clothes were a hindrance and a nuisance. At last he was free. He had not realized what a prisoner he had been.

Harry Graf Kessler

It seems to me we are now, since 1789, going through the same sort of process of regeneration the Roman world went through between 300 and 500. It is only to be hoped all civilization will not again be destroyed by the anarchists.

Mel Gibson

I don't think we're crumbling as a civilization, but this is not our finest hour, and it's good to be mindful that we're all susceptible to fall and to look at what are the earmarks of a civilization on the wane. What are they - destruction of the environment? Conspicuous consumption? Heard of those?

Ludwig von Mises

Civilization is a work of peaceful co-operation.

Ludwig von Mises

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.

Cynthia Ozick

Godlessness invariably produces vulgarity. Civilization is the product of belief.