Famous Quotes & Sayings

Alfred North Whitehead

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Alfred North Whitehead

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

Alfred Korzybski

Different ‘philosophies’ represent nothing but methods of evaluation, which may lead to empirical mis-evaluation if science and empirical facts are disregarded.

Alfred Korzybski

The map is not the territory.

Alex Comfort

Anarchism is that political philosophy which advocates the maximization of individual responsibility and the reduction of concentrated power regal, dictatorial, parliamentary: the institutions which go loosely by the name of "government" to a vanishing minimum.

Aldo Leopold

I do not imply that this philosophy of land was always clear to me. It is rather the end result of a life journey.

Aldo Leopold

Your woodlot is, in fact, an historical document which faithfully records your personal philosophy.

Aldous Huxley

Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.

Aldous Huxley

The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?" "You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.

Aldous Huxley

For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.

Aldous Huxley

The ductless glands secrete among other things our moods, our aspirations, our philosophy of life.

Aldous Huxley

Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

Aldous Huxley

To the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, the question whether Progress is inevitable or even real is not a matter of primary importance. For them, the important thing is that individual men and women should come to the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, and what interests them in regard to the social environment is not its progressiveness or non-progressiveness (whatever those terms may mean), but the degree to which it helps or hinders individuals in the their advance towards man's final end.

Aldous Huxley

Where beauty is worshipped for beauty's sake as a goddess, independent of and superior to morality and philosophy, the most horrible putrefaction is apt to set in. The lives of the aesthetes are the far from edifying commentary on the religion of beauty.

Aldous Huxley

What drivel it all is!... A string of words called religion. Another string of words called philosophy. Half a dozen other stringscalled political ideals. And all the words either ambiguous or meaningless. And people getting so excited about them they'll murder their neighbours for using a word they don't happen to like. A word that probably doesn't mean as much as a good belch. Just a noise without even the excuse of gas on the stomach.

Aldous Huxley

To travel is to discover that everybody is wrong. The philosophies, the civilizations which seem, at a distance, so superior to those current at home, all prove on a close inspection to be in their own way just as hopelessly imperfect.

Aldous Huxley

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons-that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.

Aldous Huxley

The moral peril to humanity of thoughtlessly accepting these conveniences [of materialism] (with their inherent disadvantages) as constituting a philosophy of life is now becoming apparent. For the implications of this disruptive materialism... are that human beings are nothing but bodies, animals, machines...

Aldous Huxley

Our conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact (discussed in a later paragraph) that the philosophy of meaningless lends itself very effectively to furthering the ends of political and erotic passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error - the error of identifying the world of science, a world from which all meaning has deliberately been excluded, with ultimate reality.

Aldous Huxley

Hinduism the perennial philosophy that is at the core of all religions.

Albert Pike

The true philosophy, known and practiced by Solomon, is the basis on which Masonry is founded.

Albert Pike

Philosophy is a kind of journey, ever learning yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth.

Albert Einstein

The fact that man produces a concept "I" besides the totality of his mental and emotional experiences or perceptions does not prove that there must be any specific existence behind such a concept. We are succumbing to illusions produced by our self-created language, without reaching a better understanding of anything. Most of so-called philosophy is due to this kind of fallacy.

Albert Einstein

Only in mathematics and physics was I, through self-study, far beyond the school curriculum, and also with regard to philosophy as it was taught in the school curriculum.

Albert Einstein

Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers, philosophy interprets.

Alexander Lowen

We live in an ocean of air like fish in a body of water. By our breathing we are attuned to our atmosphere. If we inhibit our breathing we isolate ourselves from the medium in which we exist. In all Oriental and mystic philosophies, the breath holds the secret to the highest bliss.

Alexander McCall Smith

That my philosophy of life is, as far as possible, one of enjoyment. I'm not nihilistic.

Alexander Pope

T is true,t is certain; man though dead retains, Part of himself: the immortal mind remains.

Alexander Pope

See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head! Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before, Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more. Physic of Metaphysic begs defence, And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense! See Mystery to Mathematics fly!

Alexander Pope

A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practice it.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it.

E. O. Wilson

Progress, then, is a property of the evolution of life as a whole by almost any conceivable intuitive standard.... let us not pretend to deny in our philosophy what we know in our hearts to be true.

Douglas MacArthur

In short, is American life of the future to be characterized by freedom or by servitude, strength or weakness? The answer must be clear and unequivocal if we are to avoid the pitfalls toward which we are now heading with such certainty. In many respects it is not to be found in any dogma of political philosophy but in those immutable precepts which underlie the Ten Commandments.