Quotes about Philosophy

To deny the necessity or value of metaphysics is to assert a metaphysical principle, just as to say a religion must be without dogmas is to assert a dogma.

Abstraction is the condition of the science of metaphysics, but in no way is its content.

Since evil is nothing positive, there can be no principle of evil. It has no meaning expect in reference to something good.

THOSE who start with the pagan philosophy of sex must face life as a descent. Associated with a growing old, there is a loss of physical energy and the horrible perspective of death. The Christian philosophy of love, on the contrary, implies an ascension. The body may grow older, but the Spirit grows younger, and love often becomes more intense.

There are only two philosophies of life: one is first the feast, then the headache; the other is first the fast and then the feast. Deferred joys purchased by sacrifice are always sweetest and most enduring.

There are only two philosophies of life: one is first the feast, then the headache; the other is first the fast and then the feast. Deferred joys purchased by sacrifice are always sweetest and most enduring.

In a like manner, as soon as we know the meaning of being and the meaning of nonbeing, we know that a thing cannot be and not be at one and the same time, and under the same formal consideration.

Being is the soul of every concept, of every judgment and of every reasoning.

Politics has become so all-possessive of life, that by impertinence it thinks the only philosophy a person can hold is the right or the left. This question puts out all the lights of religion so they can call all the cats gray. It assumes that man lives on a purely horizontal plane, and can move only to the right or the left. Had we eyes less material, we would see that there are two other directions where a man with a soul may look: the vertical directions of "up" or "down.

Freudanism interprets man in terms of sex; Christianity interprets sex in terms of man.

The sciences need philosophy; philosophy, in turn, needs the sciences. On both sides, certain naive minds, too confident in their own forces and satisfied with ideas entirely too superficial, believed in the universal value of a single method. On both side a severe critique must lead each method back to its just limits, and teach them to ask aid of the other methods and manners of approach which, by their convergence, will permit the mind to embrace the diverse aspects of reality

The physical method becomes a philosophy when it asserts there is no higher knowledge than the empirical knowledge of scientific phenomena. The mathematical method becomes a philosophy when it asserts that some higher knowledge is needed to explain scientific facts, and that higher knowledge is mathematics.