Philosophical Insight Quotes & Sayings

I think she is marvelous. She is untouched by politics, unmarred and untainted. She is absolutely, brilliantly humble. Honest, hardworking. And it would be my honor that she accept to be my wife. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a country to govern and a woman to woo. — Katy Evans

The ignorant man is not free, because what confronts him is an alien world, something outside him and in the offing, on which he depends, without his having made this foreign world for himself and therefore without being at home in it by himself as in something his own. The impulse of curiosity, the pressure for knowledge, from the lowest level up to the highest rung of philosophical insight arises only from the struggle to cancel this situation of unfreedom and to make the world one's own in one's ideas and thought. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today - and even professional scientists - seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is - in my opinion - the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth. — Albert Einstein

This criticism of Wolffian monism is by no means Kant's own accomplishment. In the first introduction to the Critique of Judgment he writes: "Yet it is quite easy to establish, and has in fact been realized for some time, that this attempt to bring unity into that diversity of faculties, though otherwise undertaken in the genuine philosophical spirit, is futile."25 However, if we seek to determine who was the first to have that insight, then both Kant's text and Lehmann's — Anonymous

The sun exactly at noon is exactly [beginning to] go down. And a creature when he is born is exactly [beginning to] die. — Hu Shih

For the first billion years, the universe continued to expand and cool as matter gravitated into the massive concentrations we call galaxies. Nearly a hundred billion of them formed, each containing hundreds of billions of stars that undergo thermonuclear fusion in their cores. Those stars with more than about ten times the mass of the Sun achieve sufficient pressure and temperature in their cores to manufacture dozens of elements heavier than hydrogen, including those that compose planets and whatever life may thrive upon them. These elements would be stunningly useless were they to remain where they formed. But high-mass stars fortuitously explode, scattering their chemically enriched guts throughout the galaxy. After nine billion years of such enrichment, in an undistinguished part of the universe (the outskirts of the Virgo Supercluster) in an undistinguished galaxy (the Milky Way) in an undistinguished region (the Orion Arm), an undistinguished star (the Sun) was born. The — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

To understand love, use the heart, not the brain.
To understand the mind, use the love, not the brain. — Debasish Mridha

The idea that "all men are created equal" is a gift to the world from the American Indian. — Robert M. Pirsig

Socrates, whose mother was a midwife, used to say that his art was like the art of the midwife. She does not herself give birth to the child, but she is there to help during its delivery. Similarly, Socrates saw his task as helping people to 'give birth' to correct insight, since real understanding must come from within ... Everybody can grasp philosophical truths if they just use their innate reason. — Jostein Gaarder

Waldo was not alone by any means in trembling over an unjust plight. With the recent uproar over drunk driving, arrests had skyrocketed and detention centers all around the country were overflowing with bewildered motorists. Many of these dumbstruck, inebriated souls had been transferred and thoughtfully placed behind the same bars that held back murderers and rapists. Unfortunately for our heroes, they now joined the ranks of these luckless citizens. — Donald Jeffries

Today, the qualifications required
for senior positions within NGOs reflect the evolution of those activists
who have also become managers: trained in law, business administration,
or finance, experienced, with a good capacity to "liaise" with political
circles or the business community, their profile often does not substantially
differ from those of corporate managers. — Nicolas Guilhot

For the classics philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure; for me a life of leisure is the product of philosophical insight. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You say that you hope I will be recognized as the best novelist of my generation. I want you to know now and know completely that that would mean to me absolutely nothing. — Jean Stafford

The world is with you. — A.D. Posey

I'll never think you're anything other than beautiful."
"You know how to say all the right things," I tell him.
"Because I'm with the right girl," he says against my skin. — Karina Halle

In asking philosophical questions, we use a reason shaped by the body, a cognitive unconscious to which we have no direct access, and metaphorical thought of which we are largely unaware. The fact that abstract thought is mostly metaphorical means that answers to philosophical questions have always been, and always will be, mostly metaphorical. In itself, that is neither good nor bad. It is simply a fact about the capacities of the human mind. But it has major consequences for every aspect of philosophy. Metaphorical thought is the principal tool that makes philosophical insight possible and that constrains the forms that philosophy can take. — George Lakoff

You didn't have to say it. It's written all over your face. You think more of that oversized iron-bender than you do of me. — Karen Witemeyer