Philosophy Quotes

There is a major difference between a scuba diver and a drowning man. One is in control of his experiences, the other is in over his head.

~ Laren Grey Umphlett

[Philosophers] have come to envy the philologist and the mathematician, and they have taken over all the inessential elements in those studies—with the result that they know more about devoting care and attention to their speech than about devoting such attention to their lives.

~ Seneca

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

~ Emil M. Cioran

LanguageCrickets chirp,Birds sing, Dogs howl,It's their own thing.Cats purr,Mice squeak,Cows moo,It's not what you think.Whales whistle,Dolphins click,Snakes hiss,So listen to this.Sheep baa,Rabbits twitch,If you can't speak,It's only a glitch.A body speaks,Their hands do wave,They're all speaking together,Now don't be so naïve.It's all a language,Which we don't hear,b\Because it's not our own,What do we care!

~ Anthony T. Hincks

From time immemorial, some men supposed to deal in one-valued 'eternal verities'. We called such men 'philosophers' or 'meta-physicians'. But they seldom realized that all their 'eternal verities' consisted only of words, and words which, for the most part, belonged to a primitive language, refleting in its structure the assumed structure of the world of remote antiquity. Besides, they did not realize that these 'eternal verities' last only so long as the human nervous system is not altered. Under the influence of these 'philosophers', two-valued 'logic', and the confusion of orders of abstractions, nearly all of us contracted a firmly rooted predilection for 'general' statements - 'universals', as they were called - which in most cases inherently involved the semantic one-valued conviction of validity for all 'time' to come.

~ Alfred Korzybski

Astronomy is not the science of all objects with mass and weight and velocity. The objects it describes do not include '56 Chevies. Biology is not the science of all objects that consume and excrete and have inherited characteristics. The objects it describes do not include '56 Chevies. Linguistics is not the study of all possible symbols or symbol systems. The objects it describes do not include '56 Chevies.

~ Randy Allen Harris

The limits of your language are the limits of your world.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Nothing is more usual than for philosophers to encroach upon the province of grammarians; and to engage in disputes of words, while they imagine that they are handling controversies of the deepest importance and concern.

~ David Hume

Most errors consist only in our not rightly applying names to things. For when someone says that the lines which are drawn from the center of a circle to its circumference are unequal, he surely understands (then at least) by a circle something different from what mathematicians understand. Similarly, when men err in calculating they have certain numbers in their mind and different ones on the paper. So if you consider what they have in mind, they really do not err, though they seem to err because we think they have in their mind the numbers which are on the paper. If this were not so, we would not believe that they were erring, just as I did not believe that he was erring whom I recently heard cry out that his courtyard had flown into his neighbor's hen, because what he had in mind seemed sufficiently clear to me.And most controversies have arisen from this, that men do not rightly explain their own mind, or interpret the mind of the other man badly. For really, when they contradict one another most vehemently, they either have the same thoughts, or they are thinking of different things, so that what they think are errors and absurdities in the other are not.

~ Baruch Spinoza

Grammarians make no new thoughts, but thoughts make new grammar.

~ Dagobert D. Runes

Languages, symbols and universals do not change, they cannot by virtue of what they – thus, with the passing of the Ages, Tradition does not change, but the form in which it decides to manifest does – thus some religions succeed whilst others fail and become extinct. Tradition itself can never cease to exist, but the religions which are its voice perish with the rise and fall of civilizations

~ Gwendolyn Taunton

Music is the language of the universe, which everyone, including all animals, can understand.

~ Debasish Mridha

A ham sandwich is better than nothing. Nothing is better than eternal happiness. So eternal happiness is beaten by a ham sandwich.

~ Mark Forsyth

The silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Do you know, by the way, that German is the only language in the world that has a word for ‘pleasure derived from the misfortune of others’? Schadenfreude.

~ John Dolan

I'm online, therefore I am.

~ Stewart Lee Beck

Questions that pertain to the foundations of mathematics, although treated by many in recent times, still lack a satisfactory solution. Ambiguity of language is philosophy's main source of problems. That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.

~ Giuseppe Peano

Everything is language.

~ Octavio Paz

To speak only one language is to do yourself a great injustice.

~ Michelle Templet

Fireworks can make us both happy and sad. It just depends if we are talking about fireworks in the sky or fireworks with another.

~ Anthony T. Hincks

If you want to feel youthful...pink's your color.If you want to feel old...then it's blue rinse for you.If you want to feel sad...try a dark blue.If you want to say something cheerful...then it's yellow.If you want to say something racey...then it's red for sure.If you've lost your temper...then it's black as your heart.And if you want to be normal...well the only color which will show all of you is rainbow.

~ Anthony T. Hincks

To be happy, be happy with what you have. To be sad, want what you deserve.

~ Debasish Mridha

We don't get to choose if we get hurt in this world, old man, but we do have a say in who hurts us. I know I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.I do, Augustus. I do.

~ John Green

To soar with eagles all you need to do is believe that you can fly.

~ Anthony T. Hincks

I'm not an atheist,because I believe that I'm god.

~ Anthony T. Hincks

The dominant philosophy in today’s public university is called relativism, which categorically denies the existence of truth or moral absolutes. Those who are foolish enough to believe in such archaic notions as biblical authority or the claims of Christ are to be pitied—or bullied.

~ James C. Dobson

What you believe with your heart will manifest in your life.

~ Debasish Mridha M.d.

Believe you can and you will.

~ Debasish Mridha

In the difficult moments believe in yourself.Believe that you are whole, perfect, powerful, and blessed.

~ Debasish Mridha

When you believe in your beauty, only then can everyone see it.

~ Debasish Mridha

It is the truth which is always the hardest to believe.

~ Debasish Mridha

COVERT CONVERTIf you don't believe in God, then believe in the hidden camera

~ Kamil Ali

The real virtue is not to be free from desires but to be content with what you have.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Possibly the apparent relapse they had suffered was not a fall and a cause for suffering, but a leap forward and a positive act.

~ Hermann Hesse

Culture is like a giant mirror which enables us to see who we are more clearly. The various facets of a culture also provide us with the means to change what we do not like in the mirror, and retain what we cherish most.

~ Dr Robin Lincoln Wood

Every man is worth just so much as the things about which he busies himself.

~ Marcus Aurelius

Some kind of philosophy undergirds every movie, commercial, lecture, or book. Everything we take into our minds is trying to teach us something about how we should think the world is. (Life Hacks, p.83)

~ Jon Morrison

Another anti-theoretical stratagem is to claim that in order to launch some fundamental critique of our culture, we would need to be standing at some Archimedean point beyond it. What this fails to see is that reflecting critically on our situation is part of our situation. It is a feature of the peculiar way we belong to the world. It is not some impossible light-in-the-refrigerator attempt to scrutinize ourselves when we are not there. Curving back on ourselves is as natural to us as it is to cosmic space or a wave of the sea. It does not entail jumping out of our own skin. Without such self-monitoring we would not have survived as a species.

~ Terry Eagleton

When you go with first principles, a giant light goes off in what you think is a city and turns out to be an insane asylum.

~ Stefan Molyneux

The philosopher cannot seriously put to himself questions that his civilization has not lived.

~ William Barrett