Phil Quotes

1. "We now demand glamour and fast-flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals...The tragic results of this spirit all all about us: shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies...the glorification of men, trust is religious externalities....salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. These and such of these are the symptoms of an evil disease."
Author: A.W. Tozer

2. "It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher."
Author: Alain De Botton

3. "In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them."
Author: Aleister Crowley

4. "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
Author: Alfred North Whitehead

5. "I represent the Port of Philadelphia, and I know firsthand the important role that ports play in the national and global economy. I have also seen how simple accidents can have devastating impacts on the port system."
Author: Allyson Schwartz

6. "It is just a lonely certainty that we are right and everybody else wrong, which makes it worthwhile for us busy-bodies to go on making a nuisance of ourselves. Our job is to keep both the simple Philistine and the greedy rich in their places, to prevent them, in their stupidity and avarice, from destroying everything that is left."
Author: Auberon Waugh

7. "No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that 'In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth'. ... [I]f you compare it with the creation legends of other peoples--with all these delightful absurdities in which giants to be cut up and floods to be dried up are made to exist before creation--the depth and originality of this Hebrew folk tale will soon be apparent."
Author: C.S. Lewis

8. "I always learned to be philanthropic... to give back."
Author: Charlotte Rae

9. "So it is that, just as nature abhors a vacuum, philosophy abhors an answer, for once the truth is truly attained, the game is truly up."
Author: Dan Garfat Pratt

10. "Fucking cracker," Alvarado hissed as he was shoved into the patrol car."Aw, that's discrimination, right there." I feigned hurt. "See, I see you as scumbag first, Alvarado. Or dick-cheese. Scumsucking pedophile. Asshole. The fact that you're Hispanic doesn't even factor into it."
Author: Dani Alexander

11. "Do you want to achieve something or do you just want to make money?" asked a nearby man in a white shirt to another man in a striped shirt. I waited for the answer as I slowly walked past them. "Why is it an either or question?" the man in the striped shirt finally murmured philosophically under a sip of beer. They both stood there looking at each other in thought."
Author: Daniel Amory

12. "I was raised in a group home for 14 years, so I was a beneficiary of philanthropy. I didn't have a family. The nameless, faceless strangers were my family. They gave me an education, put food on the table and clothes on my back. I am who I am because of that formative experience. Now I am paying it forward."
Author: Darell Hammond

13. "Reality [...] at every level from photons to philosophical fancies to the consciousness of living organisms was fluid [...]. To break apart and confine this reality into separate categories created by the mind was foolish and futile, much like trying to capture a ray of light inside a dark wooden box. This urge to categorize was the true fall of man [...] the infinite became finite, good opposed evil, thoughts hardened into beliefs, one's joys and discoveries became dreadful certainties, man became alienated from what he perceived as other ways and other things, and, ultimately, divided against himself, body and soul. [...] Always seeking meaning, always making their lives safe and comfortable, human beings do not truly live."
Author: David Zindell

14. "No, Mr Crawford!' cried Philippa forbiddingly, and ducking under the snatching arms that tried to prevent her, she ran forward. ‘No! What harm can Sir Graham do now? What might the little boy become?' And sinking on her knees, she shook, in her vehemence, Lymond's bloodstained arm. ‘You castigate the Kerrs and the Scotts and the others, but what is this but useless vengeance? He can do us no harm; he can do Scotland no harm; he can do Malta no harm. There is a baby!' said Philippa, very loudly and insistently and desperately, as if Lymond could not hear her, or were too tired or too simple to understand. ‘There is a baby. You can't abandon your son!"
Author: Dorothy Dunnett

15. "The 76ers hold a special place in my heart and I am intrigued by the opportunity to return to Philadelphia, where I was part of a rebuilding program, joining the team the year after it went 9-73 and going to the NBA Finals just four years later."
Author: Doug Collins

16. "Holiness must have a philosophical and theological foundation, namely, Divine truth; otherwise it is sentimentality and emotionalism. Many would say later on, 'We want religion, but no creeds.' This is like saying we want healing, but no science of medicine; music, but no rules of music; history, but no documents. Religion is indeed a life, but it grows out of truth, not away from it. It has been said it makes no difference what you believe, it all depends on how you act. This is psychological nonsense, for a man acts out of his beliefs. Our Lord placed truth or belief in Him first; then came sanctification and good deeds. But here truth was not a vague ideal, but a Person. Truth was now lovable, because only a Person is lovable. Sanctity becomes the response the heart makes to Divine truth and its unlimited mercy to humanity."
Author: Fulton J. Sheen

17. "A man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it."
Author: G.K. Chesterton

18. "It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period."
Author: G.K. Chesterton

19. "I'd make Jack Benny look like a philanthropist."
Author: Gilbert Gottfried

20. "The War Department in Washington briefly weighed more ambitious schemes to relieve the Americans on a large scale before it was too late. But by Christmas of 1941, Washington had already come to regard Bataan as a lost cause. President Roosevelt had decided to concentrate American resources primarily in the European theater rather than attempt to fight an all-out war on two distant fronts. At odds with the emerging master strategy for winning the war, the remote outpost of Bataan lay doomed. By late December, President Roosevelt and War Secretary Henry Stimson had confided to Winston Churchill that they had regrettably written off the Philippines. In a particularly chilly phrase that was later to become famous, Stimson had remarked, 'There are times when men have to die."
Author: Hampton Sides

21. "My philosophy? Simplicity plus variety."
Author: Hank Stram

22. "In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,' the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture."
Author: Henry Kissinger

23. "All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side."
Author: Herman Melville

24. "..and then, there is a 'fan' for whom every writer is his favorite writer... he is just like that philanderer who woos every damsel to be her one and only ladylove.."
Author: Himmilicious

25. "The more I drive myself into the depth of my inside, the more things come up to my vision, visibly or invisibly... I even do not know if I am seeing them with my eye or with my mind. I just need to copy them on my canvases. But this mental process is always overwhelming. I often have hard time to deal with my emotion on this state. You could call this depression on surface? But actually, so many 're-birth' and 'reform' are going on on my thoughts, inspiration, philosophy...etc in the underwater. I believe this struggle make my art real. My art always comes from my emotion."
Author: Hiroko Sakai

26. "The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags."
Author: James Buchan

27. "I bought some books in order to learn the first principles of philosophy."
Author: Johann Heinrich Lambert

28. "Virginians were no more angels or philanthropists than people to the north or to the south of them. They were moved by their affections, their interest, and their resentments, just as humanity is moved today."
Author: John Sergeant Wise

29. "There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite."
Author: Joyce Carol Oates

30. "Unk had no way of judging the quality of the information contained in the letter. He accepted it all hungrily, uncritically. And, in accepting it, Unk gained an understanding of life that was identical with the writer's understanding of life. Unk wolfed down a philosophy."
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

31. "As long as he followed the fixed definition of obscure words such as spirit, will, freedom, essence, purposely letting himself go into the snare of words the philosophers set for him, he seemed to comprehend something. But he had only to forget the artificial train of reasoning, and to turn from life itself to what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with the fixed definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to pieces at once like a house of cards, and it became clear that the edifice had been built up out of those transposed words, apart from anything in life more important than reason."
Author: Leo Tolstoy

32. "It is really one of the most serious faults which can be found with the whole conception of democracy, that its cultural function must move on the basis of the common denominator. Such a point of view indeed would make a mess of all of the values which we have developed for examining works of art. It would address one end of education in that it would consider that culture which was available to everyone, but in that achievement it would eliminate culture itself.This is surely the death of all thought.This quote is taken from "The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art" by Mark Rothko, written 1940-1 and published posthumously in 2004 by Yale University Press, pp.126-7."
Author: Mark Rothko

33. "I admire you your willingness to offer kindness almost indiscriminately. But unfortunately, it takes a lot more than kindness to survive in this world." I understood what she meant, but I also understood that Mom's philosophy was a powerful weapon."
Author: Matthew Quick

34. "The options available to a creative person are ever limited by the choices offered by a philosopher."
Author: Neil DeGrasse Tyson

35. "Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home."
Author: Novalis

36. "What a silly thing love is!' said the student as he walked away. 'It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to philosophy and study metaphysics.' So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read."
Author: Oscar Wilde

37. "The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real."
Author: Parmenides

38. "How have people come to be taken in by The Phenomenon of Man? We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of this kind [pseudoscience/'woo'], for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought."
Author: Peter Medawar

39. "If philosophy has to serve some really noble purpose, it must be more observant than critical towards life."
Author: Raheel Farooq

40. "Only the free-wheeling artist-explorer, non-academic, scientist-philosopher, mechanic, economist-poet who has never waited for patron-starting and accrediting of his co-ordinate capabilities holds the prime initiative today."
Author: Richard Buckminster Fuller

41. "[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred."
Author: Richard Francis Burton

42. "This was the last thing I expected. You destroy my life and then feed me some inspiratonal philosophy."
Author: Richelle Mead

43. "For example, a few years ago, a great French philosopher, Roger Garaudy, wrote a scientific book. He did not offend, curse, or insult anyone. He wrote a scientific research of an academic nature, in which he discussed the alleged Jewish Holocaust in Germany. He proved that this Holocaust is a myth."
Author: Sayed Hassan Nasrallah

44. "A personal mission statement is based on Habit Two of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People called "Begin with the End in Mind." In one's life, the most effective way to begin with the end in mind is to develop a mission statement, one that focuses on what you want to be in terms of character and what you want to do in reference to contributions and achievements. It is based upon self-chosen values and principles. Victor Hugo once said, "There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come." A mission statement is that idea. You may call it a credo or a philosophy; or you may call it a purpose statement. It's not important what it is called. What is important is that vision, purpose, and values are more powerful, more significant, and more influential than the baggage of the past or the accumulated noise of the present."
Author: Stephen R. Covey

45. "Cesar is not a philosophical man. His life has been one long flight from reflection. At least he is clever enough not to expose the poverty of his general ideas; he never permits the conversation to move toward philosophical principles. Men of his type so dread all deliberation that they glory in the practice of the instantaneous decision. They think they are saving themselves from irresolution; in reality they are sparing themselves the contemplation of all the consequences of their acts. Moreover, in this way they can rejoice in the illusion of never having made a mistake; for act follows so swiftly on act that it is impossible to reconstruct the past and say that an alternative decision would have been better. They can pretend that every act was forced on them under emergency and that every decision was mothered by necessity"
Author: Thornton Wilder

46. "Ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man... What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic."
Author: Viktor E. Frankl

47. "And so they would go on talking or rather, understanding, which has become the main art of speech in an age when words are growing daily so scanty in comparison with ideas that ‘the biscuits ran out' has to stand for kissing a negress in the dark when one has just read Bishop Berkeley's philosophy for the tenth time. (And from this it follows that only the most profound masters of style can tell the truth, and when one meets a simple one–syllable writer, one may conclude, without any doubt at all, that the poor man is lying.)"
Author: Virginia Woolf

48. "At that shameful stage in the development of our criticism, literary abuse would overstep all limits of decorum; literature itself was a totally extraneous matter in critical articles: they were pure invective, a vulgar battle of vulgar jokes, double-entendres, the most vicious calumnies and offensive constructions. It goes without saying, that in this inglorious battle, the only winners were those who had nothing to lose as far as their good name was concerned. My friends and I were totally deluded. We imagined ourselves engaged in the subtle philosophical disputes of the portico or the academy, or at least the drawing room. In actual fact we were slumming it."
Author: Vladimir Odoevsky

49. "The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation."
Author: Walter Pater

50. "There are days, there are times, when you feel like you've walked so far, when the voice inside you is complaining that it's all uphill, that it always will be. And then, after all that, way beyond your blue horizon, you see the biggest mountains you've ever seen, and you think, "I can't do that." Well, I hope you always have somebody who tells you that you can. Like I'm telling you now."
Author: Windy Ariestanty

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