Famous Quotes & Sayings

Jacques Maritain

The sole philosophy open to those who doubt the possibility of truth is absolute silence -- even mental.

Jacques Maritain

If it is correct to say that there will always be rightist temperaments and leftist temperaments, it is nevertheless also correct to say that political philosophy is neither rightist nor leftist; it must simply be true .

Jacques Ellul

Philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.

Jacob K. Javits

My own philosophy is that you don't really belong to yourself. You have an obligation to the society which protected you when you were brought into the world, which taught you, which supported you and nurtured you. You have an obligation to repay it.

Jacob Lawrence

My belief is that it is most important for an artist to develop an approach and philosophy about life - if he has developed this philosophy, he does not put paint on canvas, he puts himself on canvas.

Henry Adams

The philosopher says--I am, and the church scouts his philosophy. She answers:--No! you are NOT, you have no existence of your own. You were and are and ever will be only a part of the supreme I AM, of which the church is the emblem.

Henry Adams

[P]hilosophy . . .consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Henry Adams

After Gibbs, one the most distinguished [American scientists] was Langley, of the Smithsonian. ... He had the physicist's heinous fault of professing to know nothing between flashes of intense perception. ... Rigidly denying himself the amusement of philosophy, which consists chiefly in suggesting unintelligible answers to insoluble problems, and liked to wander past them in a courteous temper, even bowing to them distantly as though recognizing their existence, while doubting their respectibility.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Love is the essence of all religion, mysticism, and philosophy, and for the one who has learned this, love fulfills the purpose of religion, ethics, and philosophy, and the lover is raised above all diversities of faiths and beliefs.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

Now if I do anything it is to tune souls instead of instruments. To harmonize people instead of notes. If there is anything in my philosophy, it is the law of harmony: that one must put oneself in harmony with oneself and with others.

Henry George

My primary object is to defend and advance a principle in which I see the only possible relief from much that enthralls and degrades and distorts, turning light to darkness and good to evil, rather than to gage a philosopher or weigh a philosophy. Yet the examination I propose must lead to a decisive judgment upon both.

Henry George

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.

Henry George

As Mazzini said ... it is around the standard of duty rather than around the standard of self-interest that men must rally to win the rights of man. And herein may we see the deep philosophy of Him who bade men love their neighbors as themselves. In that spirit, and in no other, is the power to solve social problems and carry civilization onward.

Henry Hazlitt

When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.

Henepola Gunaratana

DUE TO OUR FEELINGS ARISING FROM CONTACT, we think and we rationalize, conceptualize, theorize, philosophize and speculate. Because of the feeling arising from the six senses, we increase our desire; we come to wrong views and wrong beliefs. We recall our past sights, smells, sounds, tastes, touches and ideas and build up more desires, thoughts, concepts, beliefs, ideas, theories and philosophies.

Hector Hugh Munro

He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let sleep.

Henry David Thoreau

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

Henry Ford

For thirty years I have leaned toward the theory of Reincarnation. It seems a most reasonable philosophy and explains many things. No, I have no desire to know what, or who I was once; or what, or who, I shall be in the ages to come. This belief in immortality makes present living the more attractive. It gives you all the time there is. You will always be able to finish what you start. There is no fever or strain in such an outlook. We are here in life for one purpose: to get experience. We are all getting it, and we shall all use it somewhere.

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.

Manly Hall

Each person must discover his own philosophy of life, and it is not fair or right to impose our codes upon others. It is also our responsibility, however, to share one with another such experiences as may have common value. We desire, therefore, not to convert or convince, but to invite such a sharing with the sincere hope that some mutual good will be accomplished.

Malcolm X

The political philosophy of black nationalism means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more.

Johannes Kepler

In theology we must consider the predominance of authority; in philosophy the predominance of reason.

John Adams

I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.

Proverbs may not improperly be called the philosophy of the common people.

James Joyce

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.

James Joyce

Every age must look for its sanction to its poetry and philosophy, for in these the human mind, as it looks backward or forward, attains to an eternal state.

James Salter

I don't fear death. I'm not obsessed with it the way everybody else seems to be. It's wrong to say "everybody," but in literature I see it all the time - preoccupation with it, philosophical preoccupation, in fact. That's a principle element of literature and philosophy, often cited as the main element, the only real element. I say give it up.

James Fox

When I teach a new group of students, I introduce some yoga philosophy, but I don't overload them with information. Just enough so they understand the real tradition behind this ancient practice and that it's not a stretching class. Guys come in and they're a little nervous. I tell them that when they cross the threshold of the door, they're crossing to a different dimension. They're moving from an externally-oriented reality to an internally-oriented one.

Laurence Sterne

Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.

Liberty Hyde Bailey

Science may eventually explain the world of How. The ultimate world of Why may remain for contemplation, philosophy, religion.

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.

Friedrich August von Hayek

If I am not mistaken, psychology, psychiatry and some branches of sociology, not to speak about the so-called philosophy of history, are even more affected by what I have called the scientistic prejudice, and by specious claims of what science can achieve.

Friedrich Schiller

Knowledge, the object of knowledge and the knower are the three factors which motivate action; the senses, the work and the doer comprise the threefold basis of action.