Empiricism Philosophy Quotes & Sayings

After Bush was elected in 2004 - please note that I didn't say 're-elected' - and I was walking around in my befuzzed state of confusion and low-grade depression, I set out more or systematically to read writers who'd grappled with that fundamental question of what America is, why it is the way it is. — Ben Fountain

I'd done about 10 movies before I decided I wanted to make acting the main thrust of my career. — Jeff Bridges

Understand that religion, at least western versions of it, rests on a type of thinking called Revelation. This mode holds that truths concerning the workings of reality are hidden, masked by, through or behind a deity such that only a few privileged souls are able to see through the veil and "reveal" those truths. . . But (around 1600) revelation as a means of understanding began to be challenged by two other methods of differentiating truth from fallacy: Reason and Empiricism. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

some Japanese philosophers have been eager to graft the newly introduced discipline of western academic philosophy onto its premodern Japanese antecedents. The conflict with traditional values proposed a whole host of new questions: Can one articulate an original yet comprehensive epistemology that would give western empiricism and logic an appropriate place but subordinate it to a dominant "Asian" basis for thought and values? Can one develop a viable ethics that places agency in a socially interdependent, rather than isolated and discrete, individual? Can one construct an interpretation of artistry based in a mode of responsiveness that is also the ground for knowledge and moral conduct? Can one envision a political theory of the state that allows for personal expression without assuming a radical individualism? Along with these fundamental issues, a great deal of attention was devoted to a still more basic question: What is culture and what affect does it have on philosophizing? — James W. Heisig

Empiricism in the sciences is a method; naturalism in philosophy is a metaphysics; and the latter neither follows from nor underlies the former. — David Bentley Hart

Hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in. We internalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives - the messages that say it's wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than men. — Sheryl Sandberg

The real catastrophes are always different-unimaginable, unprepared for, unknown — Karen Thompson Walker

Empirical science, empiricism, takes no account of the soul, no account of what constitutes and determines personal being. — Oliver Sacks

The significant contribution of empiricism was not the eradication of certainty, but the eradication of infallibility as a criterion of certainty. And this shift from infallibilism to fallibilism has profound consequences not only for toleration, but also for the subordination of faith to reason and theology to philosophy. — George H. Smith

Without the withering criticism by nominalism, medieval Christian philosophy and theology would not have relinquished their claim to the role of knowledge in discovering the nature of things in light of higher principles; instead, it caused them to leave the field of battle without any defense before the onslaught of secularism, rationalism, and empiricism, which were, as a result, able to gain a remarkably easy victory. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy. — Sun Tzu

But what was making her unhappy? Where was the extraordinary catastrophe that had wrecked her life?She raised her head and looked around, as though trying to find the cause of her suffering. — Gustave Flaubert

truly my opinion is, that all our opinions are alike vain and uncertain. what we approve today, we condemn tomorrow. we keep a stir about knowledge, and spend our lives in the pursuit of it, when, alas! we know nothing all the while: nor do i think it possible for us to ever know anything in this life. our faculties are too narrow and too few. nature certainly never intended us for speculation. — George Berkeley

He who believes in nothing still needs a girl to believe in him. — Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

In nature everything is connected, interwoven, subject to natural law. We cannot separate ourselves from that, no matter how hard we try. — Jeffrey R. Anderson

Don't hate yourselves because you will regret in the future. Your souls may be valuable in society. — Saaif Alam

According to John Shook, "'Go see, ask why, show respect' is the way we turn the philosophy of scientific empiricism into actual behavior." It's an expression he originally learned from Fujio Cho (past president and chairman of Toyota). In an LEI blog, Shook went on to say, "We go observe what is really happening (at the Gemba where the work takes place), while showing respect for the people involved, especially the people who do the real value-creating work of the business. — Michael Bremer

The educated don't get that way by memorizing facts; they get that way by respecting them. — Tom Heehler

Empiricism teaches that there is a real world of fixed things on the outside and that ideas of these outside things are stamped on the mind which is at the beginning of life a blank. — Holly Estil Cunningham

I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write — W.S. Merwin

The missionaries did not come to Foochow to acquire property, learn the language, or even to establish amicable relations with their Chinese neighbors. Nor, although Welton, White, and Wiley practiced medicine, was the relief of suffering itself their goal. Even though the missionaries established schools in the 1850s it cannot be said that they had come to promote education. Nor, although they loaned books and showed gadgets to curious officials, was their aim the promotion of intercultural understanding. Their objective in coming to the mission field was amazingly simple and straightforward. It was to make converts to Christianity. — Ellsworth C. Carlson

The mantra that you're given in Transcendental Meditation you keep to yourself. The reason being, true happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within. — David Lynch

If proof were the standard of truth, fallacies would constitute the ultimate reality. — Raheel Farooq

Such is the strange situation in which modern philosophy finds itself. No former age was ever in such a favourable position with regard to the sources of our knowledge of human nature. Psychology, ethnology, anthropology, and history have amassed an astoundingly rich and constantly increasing body of facts. Our technical instruments for observation and experimentation have been immensely improved, and our analyses have become sharper and more penetrating.
We appear, nonetheless, not yet to have found a method for the mastery and organization of this material. When compared with our own abundance the past may seem very poor. But our wealth of facts is not necessarily a wealth of thoughts. Unless we succeed in finding a clue of Ariadne to lead us out of this labyrinth, we can have no real insight into the general character of human culture; we shall remain lost in a mass of disconnected and disintegrated data which seem to lack all conceptual unity. — Ernst Cassirer