Quotes about Philosophy

The agony of the rat or the slaughter of a calf remains present in thought not through pity but as the zone of exchange between man and animal in which something of one passes into the other.

We should know what our convictions are, and stand for them. Upon one's own philosophy, conscious or unconscious, depends one's ultimate interpretation of the facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one's subjective principles. As the man is, so will be his ultimate truth.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Philosophy is a blind man in a dark room, searching for a black hat that isn't there.

The process of writing can be a powerful tool for self-discovery. Writing demands self-knowledge; it forces the writer to become a student of human nature, to pay attention to his experience, to understand the nature of experience itself. By delving into raw experience and distilling it into a work of art, the writer is engaging in the heart and soul of philosophy - making sense out of life.

Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor.

Your reasoning is fine, but your experience is limited. Enlarge your experience, and your philosophy will be different.

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury; and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.”

Zen's greatest contribution is to give you an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world, the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man. Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children.

"The modern habit of saying, 'Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me'--the habit of saying this is mere weak mindedness.  A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos.  A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon."

Philosophy is speculation, Zen is participation. Participate in the night leaving, participate in the evening coming, participate in the stars and participate in the clouds; make participation your lifestyle and the whole existence becomes such a joy, such an ecstasy. You could not have dreamed of a better universe.

Life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do
not even need to appear plausible, since they are true. 

"Of all the weaknesses little men rail against, there is none that they are more apt to ridicule than the tendency to believe. And of all the signs of a corrupt heart and a feeble head, the tendency of incredulity is the surest. Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny."

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

     fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

     beauty     .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
     (but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

     thou answerest

them only with

spring)

Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity.

From its abstractionist posture, intellectualism typically conveys the impression that it is chiefly or only from passion that rationality can suffer; the folk-wisdom among rationalists is that emotion is the primary pollutant obstructing rational processes. But it is also, and far more pertinently in our age, from apathy that rationality suffers: when people do not care enough to think about received opinions, when they have no inherent drive to dissociate themselves from the dogmas and biases of their age, when their own freedom and the transcendence of the truth mean so little to them that they will not endure the painful task of self-reflection, when the very scale or profundity of problems the modern age has generated invite a defeatist attitude, then indeed it is truer than ever what Kierkegaard wrote a century and a half ago: "What the age needs is passion," not barbaric but sublimated energy. Hegel's truism about history--that "nothing great is ever accomplished without passion"--explains a great deal about our effete culture, our sterile education and stagnant politics. Like Marx and Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Hegel wrote out of a prodigious reservoir of passion that did not in the least prevent them from being critical and rational. In our present era--wracked by a morbid boredom and an unshakeable conviction that there is nothing worth learning and preserving--I believe the lesson is clear. Difficult and risky as it may be, heat as well as light is called for.

A human being who shows some singular or distinctive indications of being anomalous, of actually being capable of uncompromising honesty with himself, is worth investigating and listening to or reading or challenging or raising questions with; but in the marketplace of the Many, all the multitudes of signs and treasure-maps will only convince a discerning individual that the X that marks "buried treasure" is the last place in the world to waste one's time digging for buried treasure--cunning and perceptive people who really have treasure buried someplace will convey tacitly to other cunning and perceptive people that the best place to bury treasure is in those places where no naive or simplistic mentality would ever think of looking.

The reason why it hurts when you fall and hits the ground, it's because the ground hits back.

Khoa Nhut Nguyen.

SO NOW YOU MUST CHOOSE... Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so? To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable - bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder…

The more you know, the less you explain.

You do not win big by betting on a sure winner, because the odds are always low on a sure winner.

The most successful politicians could have an outstanding career in Hollywood if they want to.

The condition of love is honesty.

Nothing comes before and after all.


Khoa Nhut Nguyen.

The more you know, the less you need to explain.

Khoa Nhut Nguyen.

A master of words is like the wind, which only speaks in silence.

Khoa Nhut Nguyen.

The universe is a philosophical abyss.

I'm a slumdog philosopher.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Wisdom and intelligence is far from the same, intelligence thinks for itself while wisdom thinks for all.

To be enlighten is too original, if you want to be original you must set your own footsteps and never follows others, you can never be original and only a copy if you follows the footsteps of others.

Khoa Nhut Nguyen.

Every noble action is selfish. Some selfish actions are nobler than others. But they are all selfish. And as such there can be no action purely noble anyway. Even the nobility in God's great philosophical intentions is bounded by his vanity.

I start off with the obvious, that it makes no sense either to believe or to disbelieve in God until a substantial and intelligent definition or concept should be offered. Belief or disbelief is a secondary consideration, contingent on the intelligibility and cogency of the premise; the primal unintelligence or irrationality of moderns is revealed by their eagerness to leap to a conclusion without ever being curious what the hell the original premise was.

There is both a legal and illegal way to steal people's money, without it can be notified as theft, the illegal is called protection money and the legal is called the taxes.

Khoa Nhut Nguyen.

Absolutely truth is absolutely  lie.

Khoa Nhut Nguyen.