Philosophy Quotes

"The subject becomes truly subject only when it experiences the totality as unbearable."

"The system presents itself as inevitable, natural, unchangeable—which is the first sign of its vulnerability."

"To impose unity where it is not there is a terrible thing. Pluralism is a fact of human experience."

"What interests me most is the problem of how we are to live in a world where so many deeply held values conflict with each other."

"The ideas of the great philosophers live on in ways they themselves could never have predicted."

"The rationalist believes that everything can be solved if we only think hard enough. This is a peculiarly modern kind of madness."

"To say that something is inevitable is to rob human beings of moral agency."

"Every system of thought contains the seeds of its own contradiction."

"The problem with utopias is not that they are wrong, but that they are not concerned with the actual suffering of actual people."

"I have spent my life trying to understand how intelligent people can believe such contradictory things."

"I have never been satisfied with the notion that we can be objective about human values."

"I think the great philosophers are those who are troubled by the same questions that trouble ordinary people."

"I think we make a great mistake in trying to make everything rational."

"The notion that we can separate reason from emotion is a great error in philosophy."

"I think what matters most about any idea is not whether it is true, but whether it is interesting."

"Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things, is the one activity from which the Vita Contemplativa has kept itself free."

"The human condition is that condition which characterizes human existence."

"The condition of man is that condition which characterizes human existence as distinct from animal life."

"What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational."

"The task of philosophy is to comprehend what is, for what is is reason."

"Mind and being are essentially one; existence is the expression of thought."

"Spirit knows itself through the alienation and return of consciousness."

"The ethical is not mere custom; it is the very substance of rationality."

"Every epoch believes itself the culmination of human development."

"Spirit realizes itself through objectification and the recovery of that objectification."

"The absolute must be understood as process, not as static being."

"Determination through negation is the fundamental principle of conceptual development."

"The presupposition of philosophy is that the rational is real and the real is rational."

"Side constraints reflecting the rights of individuals are not merely goals to be achieved."

"We cannot regard ourselves as ends in ourselves and also allow our ends to be subordinated to the collective good."