To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
…we do not think all Philosophy is worth one hour of pain.
– Blaise Pascal, Pensees
The society that scorns excellence in plumbing…and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy…will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
– Dr. John Gardner
The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite.
– G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday
Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses a part of it.
– Henry David Thoreau
The problem of philosophy is, for all that exists conditionally, to find a ground unconditioned and absolute.
– Plato
Philosophers can be happy without music;
– Socrates
…there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently,
– William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
There are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
– William Shakespeare, Hamlet
A philosopher could hardly have a higher ambition than to make himself a mouth-piece for the memory and judgment of his race.
Philosophers have sometimes said that all ideas come from experience; they never could have been poets and must have forgotten that they were ever children.
– George Santayana, The Life of Reason
Nature remains always young and whole in spite of death at work everywhere…
– George Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets
There is no such thing as a private language.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
…we live and breathe in the tremulousness of our lives…
…the several faiths are each a faith in existence itself…
The dark ring of ambiguity around life is a crucial ingredient in its richness…
– John D. Caputo, Philosophy and Theology
…the way to certainty lies through radical doubt…
– William James, A Pluralistic Universe
“Why?” is a theological question.
– Gerald G. May, M.D., Addiction and Grace
If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.
Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!
…the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man…
– Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man’s real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are.
Idolatry has two faults. It is not only a slur on the true God; it is also an insult to true things.
– Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb
…science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be…
– Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years
The one question any three-year-old will ask incessantly is the one question impossible for science to answer: Why?
– Proctor Charlie
