"Some peacocks hide their peacock's tails from all eyes—and call that their pride." —Nietzsche
"The feeling of confidence. How is this manifested in behavior?" —Ludwig Wittgenstein (hereafter 'LW')
"...I told him I had reviewed a book by Dr. C. E. M. Joad called Teach Yourself Philosophy. Wittgenstein assumed it would have been a bad book and hoped I had not lost the opportunity of saying so. I said that I had said so; but that I had lent the book to a policeman of my acquaintance who had read it aloud to his wife cover to cover. They had both been greatly charmed: "It opened up a new world to me," the policeman said. This very much interested Wittgenstein and after a moment he said: "Yes, I understand how that is. Have you ever seen a child make a grotto with leaves and stones and candles--and then creep in out of the world into a world he has made for himself? It was the grotto that your policeman friend liked to creep into."
—Karl Britton, "Portrait of a Philosopher"
"A main cause of a philosophical disease--an unbalanced diet: one nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of example." —LW
"Language is an instrument. Its concepts are instruments." —LW
"People say again and again that philosophy doesn't really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. But the people who say this don't understand why it has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions." —LW
"Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?" —LW
Philosophy hasn't made progress? — If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn't it genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching?" —LW
"If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done." —LW
"The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you must still seduce the senses to it." —Nietzsche
"You must say what you really think as though no one, not even you, could overhear it." —LW
"Ambition is the death of thought." —LW
We are not analysing a phenomenon (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g. that of thinking), and therefore the use of a word. So it may look as if what we were doing were Nominalism. Nominalists make the mistake of interpreting all words as names, and so of not really describing their use, but only, so to speak, giving a paper draft on such a description." —LW
"To say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public-policy debates is a practical absurdity; our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition."
—Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope
"The running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it." —LW
"The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God… To pray is to think about the meaning of life…To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life… To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning." —LW
"Because it is in pain that we find the meaning of life..." (from Pan's Labyrinth)
"The human body is the best picture of the human soul." —LW
Frustration may arise from one's actions from time to time, but it is better to struggle as you climb the ladder than to look down imperiously. As much as these moments may seem undesirable and elicit discomfort, it is better this way. One who looks down from ahigh has settled on what there is in the world, and is committing oneself to a particular hierarchy. But wouldn't things be better if one actively appended one's worldview so that the top was never reached? Or would most prefer that such things be reached and discarded rather than perpetually out of reach--would most prefer the outcome rather than the process?
One cannot live for outcomes. These have a superficial quality--and always the same too: anticipation and satisfaction. Instead, one should live for the process of becoming. This may seem hard to do, but it seems as though life is better structured for this.
"[The tolerance of Ambiguity is the cornerstone of adulthood.]"
(I haven't been able to find the actual quote. My poetry professor was quoting Jung, I think.)
"Aim at being loved without being admired." —LW
"Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness." —LW
"The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that will make what is problematic disappear." —LW
"Love's the breath a Life still lifts when Life is finally over with."
"Life's the death a Love still gets when Love is finally over with."
i. Random accumulated thoughts and quotations
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