Philosophy Quotes

Generic Last Rites

"I see by your outfit you may be a preacher."

"Yes, I am, - of the non-theistic, non-sectarian sort." [...]

"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen"

-- Roger Zelazny: Creatures of Light and Darkness

Heck is where people go who don't believe in gosh.

Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you wish you weren't.

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean a mother

From The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener by Martin Gardner:

On July 18, 1967, The New Yorker reported that the four thousand good citizens of the coastal town of Picoaza, Ecuador, had elected a foot powder as mayor. A company making a toes deodorant had advertised: "Vote for any candidate, but if you want well-being and hygiene, vote Pulvapies". The town elected Pulvapies by a comfortable majority. How H. L. Mecken would have guffawed over this confirmation of his low opinion of mass voting. "I do not believe in democracy," Mecken once confessed, "but I am perfectly willing to admit it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind".
-- From the chapter Why I am not an Anarchist

From Blaise Pascal, Pensees [Thoughts], translated by John Warrington (Everyman's Library):

[75] Too much and too little wine: give a man none, and he cannot find the truth; give him too much, and the same thing happens.
[80] Mere trifles console us, because mere trifles upset us.
[81] [...] This arrogant faculty [Imagination], the enemy of reason [...] cannot make fools wise, but she makes them happy, to the great regret of reason, who can only make her friends miserable [...] He who would follow reason alone would be a proven fool [...] We have another source of error, in the shape of sickness. It impairs both the judgment and the senses [...] Further, self-interest is a wonderful instrument for neatly putting out our eyes [...] Justice and truth are two points so fine that our instruments are too blunt to rest on them exactly. If we succeed in bringing them to bear, they crush the point and press on the surrounding area, on the false rather than the true.
Man is so happily formed that he has no reliable [source] of truth, but several excellent sources of falsehood. [...] But the most ridiculous cause of his errors is the conflict between sense [i.e. the senses] and reason.
[82] [...] Nothing shows [Man] the truth. Everything misleads him; those two sources of truth, reason and the senses, not only lack sincerity, but deceive one another in turn. [...] Reason and the senses are rivals in the practice of falsehood and deception.
[88] "What do you gain by slaying me? I am unarmed." -- What! do you not live across the water? If you lived on this side, I should be a murderer and it would be wrong thus to kill you; but since you live on the other side I am a hero and am doing the right thing.
[109] Fashion decides what is just, as it decides what is pleasing.
[139] People say that eclipses presage misfortune, because misfortunes are common; in other words, evil is often rightly foretold because it is of such frequent occurrence. If, on the other hand, they said that eclipses presage good fortune, they would often lie. They attribute good fortune only to rare conjunctions of heavenly bodies; so their prediction seldom fails.
[166] We do not sustain ourselves in virtue by our own strengths, but by the counterbalance between two opposite vices [reason and imagination], just as we remain upright between two contrary winds. Remove one of the vices, and we lapse into the other.
[169] We are not satisfied with our own life as it really is; we desire to live an imaginary life in the minds of others, and for that purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn and preserve our imaginary existence, and neglect the real. And if we possess either tranquility, or generosity, or constancy, we are anxious to publish the fact, so as to connect those virtues with that other existence; we would rather they were dissociated from ourselves and linked therewith. We would gladly be cowards if we could thereby earn a reputation for courage. [...]
[193] Noble birth is indeed a great advantage. It puts one in a fine position at eighteen years of age: one is known and respected as another might deserve to be at the age of fifty. This is thirty years gained without any trouble.
[196] We invariably think of Plato and Aristotle in grand academic robes. They were ordinary folk, laughing with their friends just like everybody else. When they gave their spare time to writing the Laws and the Politics, it was only for fun. That was the least philosophic and least serious part of their lives; the most philosophical was just to live simply and without fuss.
If they wrote on politics, it was as though providing for the government of a madhouse.
And if they pretended to speak of politics as of some weighty matter, it was because they knew that the madmen to whom they spoke thought themselves kings and emperors. They entered into their principles in order to render their madness as little harmful as possible.
[205] It is amusing to consider that there are people in the world who, having rejected all the laws of God and of nature, have made for themselves others which they strictly obey. Such, for example, are the soldiers of Mohammed, thieves, heretics, etc. The same is true of logicians. It seems that their licence must be without limits or barriers, since they have violated so many that are so just and so sacred.
[217] It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the ordering of my thought. I shall have no more by possessing whole worlds: by space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like a mere speck; by thought I comprehend the universe.

From The Artful Universe by John D. Barrow (Oxford University Press, 1995):

T.S. Eliot was once climbing into a London taxi when the driver said, 'You're T.S. Eliot.' The astonished poet asked how he knew. 'Oh,' replied the driver, 'I've got an eye for a celebrity. Only the other evening I picked up Bertrand Russell, and I said to him: "Well, Lord Russell, what's it all about?" and, do you know, he couldn't tell me.' -- John Naughton [source of quote unknown ; appears on page before Preface]
As soon as we start questioning the reliability of our impressions of the world -- asking whether the politician or the car salesman is really all he appears to be, or whether the hot desert road is really leading to a vast oasis -- we have become philosophers. For centuries they have agonized over whether we can have confidence in our images of the world. In so doing, they have often taken too little heed of why we have a view of the world, and from whence it came. Our minds have not fallen ready-made from the sky. They have a history that weds them to the nature of the environment in deep and influential ways. [Chapter 2, p. 5]
The evolutionary adaptation to colour, and the strong responses that we have to it, mean that the artificial colours of our modern environment can be manipulated to produce particular responses. [...] Yet, for the most part, our environment is a haphazard mish-mash of many coloured objects. The effect is to dilute our sensitivity and response to colour symbols. Sensing this trend, Humphrey writes of the appearance of his study, and of the masculine tendency to neutralize colour information at the expense of other descriptors.
As I look around the room I'm working in, man-made colour shouts back at me from every surface: books, cushions, a rug on the floor, a coffee-cup, a box of staples -- bright blues, reds, yellows greens. There is as much colour here as in any tropical forest. Yet while almost every colour in the forest would be meaningful, here in my study almost nothing is. Colour anarchy has taken over. This has dulled our response to colour. From the first moment a baby is given a string of multi-coloured -- but otherwise identical -- beads to play with he is unwittingly being taught to ignore colour as a signal. [source of quote unknown, possibly N. Humphrey, A History of the Mind (Vintage, 1993) or N. Humphrey, Consciousness Regained (Oxford University Press, 1979)]
[Chapter 4, p. 184]
More quotes from "The Artful Universe"

The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections, whence proceed sciences which may be called 'sciences as one would'. For what man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience from arrogance and pride, lest his mind should seem occupied with things mean and transitory; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections colour and infect the understanding.

-- Francis Bacon, Idols of the Tribe, from Novum Organum (1620)

From Wilfrid Hodges, An Editor Recalls Some Hopeless Papers, The Bulletic on Symbolic Logic, Vol 4, No 1, March 1998 [PostScript version available here]:

In English-speaking philosophy (and much European philosophy too) you are taught not to take anything on trust, particularly if it seems obvious and undeniable. You are also taught to criticise anything said by earlier philosophers. Mathematics is not like that; one has to accept some facts as given and not up for argument. [...] (In the days when I taught philosophy, I remember one student who was told he had failed his course badly. He duly produced a reasoned argument to prove that he hadn't.)
Other authors, less coherently, suggested that Cantor had used the wrong positive integers. He should have allowed integers which have infinite decimal expansions to the left, like the p-adic integers. To these people I usually sent the comment that they were quite right, the set of real numbers does have the same cardinality as the set of natural numbers in their sense of natural numbers; but the phrase 'natural number' already has a meaning, and that meaning is not theirs.

From The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges:

[Plato] enriched fantastic zoology with vast spherical animals and cast aspersions on those slow-witted astronomers who failed to understand that the circular course of heavenly bodies was entirely voluntary.
In Alexandria over five hundred years later, Origen, one of the Fathers of the Church, taught that the blessed would come back to life in the form of spheres and would enter rolling into heaven.
[p. 21-22]
More quotes from The Book of Imaginary Beings

Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to eat it nevertheless. -- Flaubert

From Special Illumination: The Sufi Use of Humour by Indries Shah:

A man went to a physician, feeling very much out of condition.
"Ah, yes," said the doctor, "you must do this and not do that; you must eat this and drink that ..." and he droned on for a time.
Presently the patient started to walk out.
"You haven't paid me for my advice" said the leech.
"Ah, but I am not taking it!"
[p. 17]
A disciple had been attending the discourses of a certain teacher for some years without saying or doing anything.
Finally he called him in for a private talk.
"I have been giving you exercises and teachings for many years now, and I fail to descry any change in you, and I am becoming perturbed" he told him.
"I am glad that you have noticed at last" said the disciple, "for I have personally felt for some months that you are not trying hard enough!"
[p. 18]
By putting a situation into another context, while retaining the structure, we can illustrate what is really happening. This is not so very different from, say, getting a child to attend to an arithmetical problem by speaking of apples and onions instead of "ones, twos and threes".
[p. 24]
[...] this puts me in mind of a story about Mulla Nasrudin when, camping for the night, he put a bottle down as a pillow. "Mulla", said a friend, "surely that is going to be too hard?"
"As an ordinary bottle, yes" said Nasrudin, "but I am going to stuff it with straw before I put my head on it."
[p. 30-31]
A man - so goes the ancient Western joke - went into a place which had a sign outside: "Any kind of sandwich served."
"I'll have an elephant sandwich" he said.
"Sorry, Sir," answered the the waiter, "but we cannot cut up an elephant for only one sandwich.
[p. 33]
A scholar, in his own life, can have experiences in dealing with people outside his field or on a different level which are not so different in degree and perspective from those which a Sufi encounters on his own.
One day a scholar ran into a gang of bandits who threatened to kill him. "I think you are a spy or a police agent" the chief said.
"No I am no - I'm only a poor scholar" said the unfortunate captive.
"How can you prove it?"
"I can read from a book".
"That's no good to us: we're all illiterates. How do we know you will really be reading, and not just making it all up?"
So they killed him. "I didn't become head of this band of outlaws just by believing everything people told me, you know," said the chief. And his wisdom was, of course, unanimously applauded by his men.
[p. 40-41]
Sufis themselves have always provided innumerable stories for intending students. Most of them are based on the principle that the student must study the master to see by his words and actions whether he is working on a higher level, or whether he is merely a social phenomenon. The object to this - that the student cannot tell, since the master is working in an invisible realm - is true only up to a point. When a supposed Sufi teacher manifests ordinary foibles or weaknesses as part of his life's pattern, and if the student has also done enough interior work to give him an accurate judging capacity, the truth will be evident. This is why Sufis provide material, concurrently, on how to set aside prejudices and also what unworthy teachers are like in their behaviour.
[p. 49]
An angel winged her way from celestial realms to attend to a certain matter on Earth.
As she was about to alight on the planet, she met another angel homeward bound, to report.
"What are you doing here?" asked the second angel.
"I am going to illuminate a certain mystic, who will now at last be promoted to a high rank!"
"You are too late", said the returning angel, "He has already been made head of his own Order of monks."
[p. 50]
"What is your occupation?" the Judge asked Mulla Nasrudin when he was a witness in a court case.
"I am the greatest man in the world" said the Mulla.
After the case one of his friends said: "Nasrudin, why did you say that?"
"Yes," said the Mulla, "it is rather a pity - but I had to tell them just this once: I was on oath, you see."
[p. 52]
It has been said that the difference between the Sufi and the ordinary man is that the one is aware of what is really important and the other usually unaware - even of trifles - which are useful at the time. The Sufi, they say, pursuing the thesis by the shock method may be a man who, joining the army, might save the lives of everyone in the regiment by shooting the cook: Sufism is very much exclusion as well as inclusion. But, in the same military situation, the disciple is the one who stays up until three in the morning wondering what he has forgotten: until he remembers that it was that he had to go to bed early...
[p. 58]

From Tales of the Dervishes by Idries Shah (Octagon Press, 1967):

Three fishes once lived in a pool. They were: a clever fish, a half-clever fish and a stupid fish. Life continued for them very much as it is for fishes everywhere until one day came - a man.
[From The Three Fishes, p. 3]
The Sultan could not possibly bring himself to believe a word of this. He started to give the order for the beheading of the sheikh. Perceiving by inner sense that this was to happen, the sheikh exercised the capacity called Ilm el-Ghaibat: The Science of Absence. This cause him to be instantly and corporeally transported to Damascus, many day's distance away.
[From The Sultan Who Became an Exile, p. 37]
The master said to his disciples:
"You have to learn how to teach, for Man does not want to be taught. First of all, you will have to teach people how to learn. And before that you have to teach them that there is still something to be learned. They imagine that they are ready to learn. But they want to learn what they imagine is to be learned, not what they have first to learn. When you have learned all this, then you can devise the way to teach. Knowledge without special capacity to teach is not the same as knowledge and capacity."
[From The Story of Fire, p. 41-42]
Once upon a time there was a gnat. His name was Namouss, and he was known, because of his sensitivity, as Perceptive Namouss. Namouss decided, after reflection upon his state, and for good and sufficient reasons, to move house. The place which he chose as eminently suitable was the ear of a certain elephant.
[From The Gnat Namouss - and the Elephant, p. 58]
A man died far from his home, and in the portion of his will which he had made available for bequest, he left in these words: "Let the community where the land is situated take what they wish for themselves, and let them give that which they wish to Arif the Humble."
Now Arif was a young man at the time, who had far less apparent authority than anyone in the community. Therefore the elders took possession of whatever they wanted from the land which had been left, and they allocated to Arif a few trifles only, which nobody else wanted.
Many years later Arif, grown to strength and wisdom, went to the community to claim his patrimony. "There are the objects which we have allocated to you in accordance with the Will," said the elders. They did not feel that they had usurped anything, for they had been told to take what they wished.
But, in the middle of the discussion, an unknown man of grave countenance and compelling presence appeared among them. He said: "The meaning of the Will was that you should give to Arif that which you wished for yourselves, for he can make the best use of it."
In the moment of illumination which this statement gave them, the elders were able to see the true meaning of the phrase, "Let them give that which they wish to Arif".
"Know", continued the apparition, "that the testator died unable to protect his property, which would, in case of his making Arif his legatee in an obvious sense, have been usurped by this Community. At the very least it would have caused dissension. So he entrusted it to you, knowing that if you thought that it was your own property you would take care of it. Hence he made a wise provision for the preservation and transmission of this treasure. The time has now come for it to be returned to its rightful use."
Thus it was that the property was handed back; the elders were able to see the truth."
[...] In some dervish circles this story is taught as an illustration of the claim: "You have many endowments which are yours on trust alone; when you understand this, you can give them to the rightful owners."
[From The Bequest, p. 66-67]
A man who was troubled in mind once swore that if his problems were solved he would sell his house and give all the money gained from it to the poor.
The time came when he realized he must redeem his oath. But he did not wish to give away so much money. So he thought of a way out.
He put the house on sale at one silver piece. Included with the house, however, was a cat. The price asked for this animal was ten thousand pieces of silver.
Another man bought the house and cat. The first man gave the single piece of silver to the poor, and pocketed the ten thousand for himself.
Many people's minds work like this. They resolve to follow a teaching; but they interpret their relationship with it to their own advantage. Until they overcome this tendency by special training, they cannot learn at all.
[...] The trick described in this story, according to its dervish teller (Sheikh Nasir el-Din Shah) may be deliberate - or it may describe the warped mind which unconsciously performs tricks of this kind. [...]
[From The Oath, p. 68]
[...] the works of an unknown dervish of the seventeenth century, Amil-Baba, whose manuscripts stress that "the real author is him whose work is anonymous, for in that way nobody stands between the learner and that which is learned."
[Commentary on The Gates of Paradise, p. 76]
A man once caught a bird. The bird said to him, "I am no use to you as a captive. But let me free, and I will tell you three valuable pieces of advice."
The bird promised to give the first piece of advice while still in the man's grasp, the second when he reached a branch, the third after he gained the top of a mountain.
The man agreed, and asked for the first piece of advice.
The bird said: "If you lose something, even it it be valued by you as much as life itself - do not regret it."
Now the man let the bird go, and it hopped to a branch.
It continued with the second piece of advice: "Never believe anything which is contrary to sense, without proof."
Then the bird flew to the mountain-top. From here it said: "O unfortunate one! Within me are two huge jewels, and if you had only killed me they would have been yours!"
The man was anguished at the thought of what he had lost, but he said: "At least now tell me the third piece of advice."
The bird replied: "What a fool you are, asking for more advice when you have not given thought to the first two pieces! I told you not to worry about what had been lost, and not to believe in something contrary to sense. Now you are doing both. You are believing something ridiculous and grieving because you have lost something! I am not big enough to have inside me huge jewels. You are a fool. Therefore you must stay withing the usual restrictions imposed on man."
[From Three Pieces of Advice, p. 132]
There was once a hard-working and generous farmer who had several idle and greedy sons. On his deathbed he told them that they would find his treasure if they were to dig in a certain field. [...]
But they found no gold. [...] Finally, it occurred to them that, since the land had been prepared, they might as well now sow a crop. [...] They sold this crop and prospered that year.
After the harvest was in, the sons thought again about the bare possibility that they might have missed the buried gold, so they dug up their fields, with the same result.
After several years they became accustomed to labour, and to the cycle of the seasons, something which they had not understood before. Now they understood the reason for their father's method of training them, and they became honest and contented farmers. [...]
[...] The teacher, faced with impatience, confusion and covetousness on the part of the students, must direct them to an activity which is known by him to be constructive and beneficial to them, but whose true function and aim is often hidden from them by their own rawness.
This story, underlining the claim that a person may develop certain faculties in spite of his attempts to develop others, is unusually widely known. This may be because it carries the preface, "Those who repeat it will gain more than they know."
It was published both by the Franciscan, Roger Bacon (who quotes the Sufi philosophy and taught at Oxford, from which he was expelled by order of the Pope) and the seventeenth century chemist Boerhaave.
This version is attributed to the Sufi, Hasan of Basra, who lived nearly twelve hundred years ago.
[From Three Parable of the Greedy Sons, p. 144-45]
One dark night a dervish was passing a dry well when he heard a cry for help from below. "What is the matter?" he called down.
"I am a grammarian, and I have unfortunately fallen, due to my ignorance of the path, into this deep well, in which I am now all but immobilized," responded the other.
"Hold, friend, and I'll fetch a ladder and rope," said the dervish.
"One moment, please!" said the grammarian. "Your grammar and diction are faulty; be good enough to amend them."
"If that is so much more important than the essentials," shouted the dervish, "you had best stay where you are until I have learned to speak properly."
And he went on his way.
[From The Grammarian and the Dervish, p. 193]

From A Mathematician's Apology by G. H. Hardy (Cambridge University Press, Canto Edition, 1994):

Some egotism of this sort is inevitable, and I do not feel that it really needs justification. Good work is not done by "humble" men. It is one of the first duties of a professor, for example, in any subject, to exaggerate a little both the importance of his subject and his own importance in it. A man who is always asking "Is what I do worth while?" and "Am I the right person to do it?" will always be ineffective himself and a discouragement to others. He must shut his eyes a little and think more of his subject and himself than they deserve. This is not too difficult: it is harder not to make his subject and himself ridiculous by shutting his eyes too tightly.
[Section 2, p. 66]
There are many highly respectable motives which may lead men to prosecute research, but three which are much more important than the rest. The first (without which the rest must come to nothing) is intellectual curiosity, desire to know the truth. Then, professional pride, anxiety to be satisfied with one's performance, the shame that overcomes any self-respecting craftsman when his work is unworthy of his talent. Finally, ambition, desire for reputation, and the position, even the power or the money, which it brings. It may be fine to feel, when you have done your work, that you have added to the happiness or alleviated the sufferings of others, but that will not be why you did it.
[Section 7, p. 78-79]

From Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I, i:

I rather would entreat they company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully sluggardiz'd at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.

From Teri Perl, Math Equals: Biographies of Women Mathematicians (Addison Wesley, 1978):

In September of 1889 Sonya Kovalevskaya returned to her duties in Stockholm, completely dejected. She had always been extremely temperamental, experiencing bottomless depressions. This time seemed even worse, as though she had lost the will to live. Through exhaustion and mindless carelessness she contracted pneumonia, which was to be the cause of her sudden death in 1891. At the time of her death she was only 41 years old.
Sonya Kovalevskaya had been an extraordinarily versatile and talented woman. With the greatest of ease she could turn from a lecture on Abel's functions, to research on Saturn's rings, to the writing of verse in French or a novel in Russian or a play in Swedish, to sewing a lace collar for her little daughter Fufi. In reply to a friend's surprise at her involvement in literature as well as mathematics, she wrote,
Many who have never had an opportunity of knowing any more about mathematics confound it with arithmetic and consider it an arid science. In reality however, it is a science which requires a great amount of imagination, and one of the leading mathematicians of our century states the case quite correctly when he says that it is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.... one must renounce the ancient prejudice that a poet must invent something that does not exist, that imagination and invention are identical. It seems to me that the poet has only to perceive that which others do not perceive, to look deeper than others look. And the mathematician must do the same thing. [Source of quote: Sonya Kovalévsky, Her Recollections of Childhood, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood, The Century Co., New York, 1895, p. 316]
At the time of her death, Sonya Kovalevskaya was at the very height of her fame. By penetrating deeply into the methods of mathematical research, she had made brilliant discoveries. Her contributions are considered equal to those of any mathematician of her day by any of her colleagues who are qualified to judge.
[p. 136]

From Laura Lee, The Pocket Encylopedia of Aggravation (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2001, ISBN 1579122175):

There is no escape from aggravation. People who live and work in cities deal with smog, long lines, traffic jams, noise, crowds and a more fidgety, tension-filled lifestyle. People who live in the country have their own annoyances: bugs, road-kill, stepping in cow dung and having to drive 20 minutes to get to the nearest post-office. Some people choose to work in offices, where they deal with difficult co-workers and bosses, uninspiring environments of office cubicles, and having to plan months in advance to get days off. Others avoid those hassles by being self-employed. They deal with self-employment tax, paying for medical insurance out of pocket and not having a weekly paycheck. People who live alone have to pay all the rent and there's no one at the house to call for help if the car breaks down. People who live together have to compromise more. I have come to the conclusion that the key to life is choosing which annoyances you prefer to deal with and adjusting your life-style accordingly.
[Introduction, p. 10]

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