Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance.
Variant: When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.
Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That's not simple.
Some philosophical arguments (e. g. , in connection with the mindbody problem) look pretty good, while others (e. g. , those that criticize moral realism) do not.
What you discover in a democracy is that it is difficult to build a house when each nail has an opinion.
People may come along and argue philosophically that they like one better than another; but we have learned from much experience that all philosophical intuitions about what nature is going to do fail.
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
American politics are normally a result of pragmatic and not philosophical reasoning. No one in Washington has said we now prefer multilateralism.
If sculpture can really deal with the body, because we all inhabit ourselves, and if sculpture can really do that, which it is supposed to be able to do, and through it ask questions, philosophical questions, about being, I think these are all things we work on, all of us in our different ways, so perhaps somewhere in there, there are moments where dumb objects can speak.
Global warming is no longer a philosophical threat, no longer a future threat, no longer a threat at all. It's our reality.
A great mind becomes a great fortune.
Thinking in terms of risk certainly has its unsettling aspects (. . . ), but it is also a means of seeking to stabilise outcomes, a mode of colonising the future. The more or less constant, profound and rapid momentum of change characteristic of modern institutions, coupled with structured reflexivity, mean that on the level of everyday practice as well as philosophical [Seitenwechsel] interpretation, nothing can be taken for granted. What is acceptableappropriaterecommended behaviour today may be seen differently tomorrow in the light of altered circumstances or incoming knowledge-claims.
Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.
Maybe the most provocative thing one can do - and I'm not the first one to do it - is to ask the moral and philosophical question: why are some people better than others? Why are some people more moral than others?
The philosophic mind inclines always to an elaborate life--the life of Goethe or of Leonardo da Vinci; but the life of the poet isintense--the life of Blake or of Dante--taking into its centre the life that surrounds it and flinging it abroad again amid planetary music.
Philosophy reduced, as we have seen, to philosophical discourse develops from this point on in a different atmosphere and environment from that of ancient philosophy. In modern university philosophy, philosophy is obviously no longer a way of life, or a form of life unless it be the form of life of a professor of philosophy.
Even virtue is fairer when it appears in a beautiful person.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.
This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.
Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.