Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts

Sunday, October 01, 2023

Truer words ....

There is no doubt that being human is incredibly difficult and cannot be mastered in one lifetime.

Dead men don’t find things out. 

Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

 

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Rules

That’s why there’s rules, understand? So that you think before you break ’em.

Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Sunday, November 27, 2022

Ideas are not dangerous unless they find seeding place in some earth more profound than the mind…. dangerous only when planted in unease and disquietude. But being so planted, growing in such earth, it ceases to be idea and becomes emotion and then religion. 

John SteinbeckThe Log from the Sea of Cortez

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

A man -- a viewing-point man -- while he will love the abstract good qualities and detest the abstract bad, will nevertheless envy and admire the person who through possessing the bad qualities has succeeded economically and socially, and will hold in contempt that person whose good qualities have caused failure. When such a viewing-point man thinks of Jesus or St. Augustine or Socrates he regards them with love because they are the symbols of the good he admires, and he hates the symbols of the bad. But actually he would rather be successful than good. In an animal other than man we would replace the term "good" with "weak survival quotient" and the term "bad" with "strong survival quotient." Thus, man in his thinking or reverie status admires the progression toward extinction, but in the unthinking stimulus which really activates him he tends toward survival. Perhaps no other animal is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox. He has never become accustomed to the tragic miracle of consciousness: Perhaps, as has been suggested, his species is not set, has not jelled, but is still in a state of becoming, bound by his physical memories to a past of struggle and survival, limited in his futures by the uneasiness of thought and consciousness.

 John SteinbeckThe Log from the Sea of Cortez

Friday, July 15, 2022

Blake: From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.

Expect poison from the standing water.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

To create a little flower is the labor of ages.

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. 

 

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell



Monday, April 18, 2022

Time does not precede . . . the world. . . . Time is something that accompanies motion and bodies.
 
The necessary connection of movement and time is real and time is something the soul (dhihn) constructs in movement.
 
Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

Tuesday, July 06, 2021

In Honor of Brood X

Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.

Matsuo Bashō

 

Saturday, May 15, 2021

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

Edward Gibbon

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

It is not a correct deduction from the principles of economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest.

 
John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire, as quoted by Zachary D.Carter in The Price of Peace

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Montaigne

When when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are some part of the time taken up with external occurrences, I some part of the time call them back again to my walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of that solitude, and to myself.... Have you known how to take repose, you have done more than he who has taken empires and cities.... of all the infirmities we have, 'tis the most barbarous to despise our being.... 'Tis an absolute and, as it were, a divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being. We seek other conditions, by reason we do not understand the use of our own; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside. 'Tis to much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we must yet walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in the world, we are but seated upon our breech. The fairest lives, in my opinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common and human model without miracle, without extravagance. Old age stands a little in need of a more gentle treatment. Let us recommend that to God, the protector of health and wisdom, but let it be gay and sociable.


Montaigne, in his 54th year at the end of his magisterial Essays.   He died at age 59 after suffering some years of kidney stones.

This ends submissions from my reading of the Essays over the last three years.  They can be found here.  

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

A man's worth is just the worth of that which he pursues....Be upright either by nature or by correction.

Contemplate the courses of the stars, as one should do that revolves along with them. Consider also without ceasing the changes of elements, one into another. Speculations upon such things cleanse away the filth of this earthly life.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Book 7)

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Most worldly affairs are performed by themselves.

Montaigne

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Jesus said:  If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. 

The Gospel of Thomas, as noted by Elaine Pagels

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Our struggle in life requires two virtues, bravery and wisdom -- readiness to endure a danger and skillful knowledge of how to manage it.

Gorgias (the Sophist)

Saturday, December 21, 2019

There are intelligible principles inherent in the matter of every phenomenon; because matter is essentially the sum of all the seemings that it has for any and all persons. 

Protagoras (the Sophist)



Wednesday, December 11, 2019

All things must be either limiting, or unlimited, or both limiting and unlimited.  Since things cannot consist either of the limiting alone or of the unlimited alone ... we must obviously conclude that the universe and its contents are fitted together and harmonized by a combination of the limiting and the unlimited.

For if everything that is were unlimited, there would not be anything of such a character that it could be recognized.

Philolaus  (a Pythagorean)


Monday, December 09, 2019

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Sunday, November 03, 2019



In everything there is a portion of everything else.

Anaxagoras, (per Philip Wheelwright, The PreSocratics)

Thursday, October 10, 2019

To be is possible and not-to-be is impossible.... Thought and being are the same.

Parmenides, (per Philip Wheelwright, The PreSocratics)