Speculative Philosophy Quotes & Sayings

My studies in Speculative philosophy, metaphysics, and science are all summed up in the image of a mouse called man running in and out of every hole in the Cosmos hunting for the Absolute Cheese. — Benjamin De Casseres

Without the National Federation of Republican Women, there would be no Republican Party. — Barry Goldwater

... it can hardly be over-exaggerated that speculative thinking is always drawn from the necessities of the time, that it is always practical, that it always shifts with the interests of the times, with the changes of social, economic, and political conditions, and finally, that it is vain to hope to find an eternal, fixed, and immutable system of philosophy, and still hope for progress. A fixed system is applicable only to a dead society. — Holly Estil Cunningham

She's not my nurse but she comes up to Gran and Gramps just the same. "Don't you doubt for a second that she can hear you," she tells them. "She's aware if everything that's going on." She stands there with her hands on her hip. I can almost picture her snapping gum. Gran and Gramps stare at her, lapping up what she's telling them. "You might think the doctors or nurses or all this equipment is running the show," she says, gesturing to the wall of medical equipment. "Nuh-uh. She's running the show. Maybe she's just biding her time. So you talk to her. You tell her to take all the time she needs, but to come on back. You're waiting for her. — Gayle Forman

Philosophy would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity. — Ray Brassier

We create a better world with beautiful deeds. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Nonetheless, it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability. — Sidney Hook

Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory. — Jimmy Swaggart

I freely admit that the remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave a completely different direction to my researches in the field of speculative philosophy. — Immanuel Kant

My fundamental axiom of speculative philosophy is that materialism and spiritualism are opposite poles of the same absurdity-the absurdity of imagining that we know anything about either spirit or matter. — Thomas Huxley

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink. — Catherine Drinker Bowen

Art altogether is nothing but a survival skill, we should never lose sight of this fact, it is, time and again, just an attempt
an attempt that seems touching even to our intellect
to cope with this world and its revolting aspects, which, as we know, is invariably possible only by resorting to lies and falsehoods, to hyprocrisy and self-deception, Reger said. These pictures are full of lies and falsehoods and full of hypocrisy and self-deception, there is nothing else in them if we disregard their often inspired artistry. All these pictures, moreover, are an expression of man's absolute helplessness in coping with himself and with what surrounds him all his life. That is what all these pictures express, this helplessness which, on the one hand, embarasses the intellect and, on the other hand, bewilders the same intellect and moves it to tears, Reger said. — Thomas Bernhard

In fact the problem Leopardi is facing is speculative and metaphysical, a problem in the history of philosophy from Parmenides to Descartes and Kant: the relationship between the idea of infinity as absolute space and absolute time, and our empirical knowledge of space and time. — Italo Calvino

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation. — Walter Pater

Philosophy is the science of estimating values. The superiority of any state or substance over another is determined by philosophy. By assigning a position of primary importance to what remains when all that is secondary has been removed, philosophy thus becomes the true index of priority or emphasis in the realm of speculative thought. — Manly Hall

The Christian life is more than just commitment to Christ; it includes a commitment to other Christians. — Rick Warren

To this it must be added, that life in a wig is to a large class of people much more terrifying and impressive than life with its own head of hair ... — Charles Dickens

Literature is both my joy and my comfort: it can add to every happiness and there is no sorrow it cannot console. — Pliny The Younger

The earlier truths are not expelled but absorbed, not contradicted but extended; and the history of each science, which may thus appear like a succession of revolutions, is, in reality, a series of developements. — William Whewell

Masonic ideas are the precious jewels of Speculative Masons; the should be kept bright and sparkling for all the brethren to see and to admire. As such, they should be the special care of Masonic leaders particularly those who teach and interpret the philosophy of Freemasonry. — Benjamin Franklin

It is presupposed that no entity can be conceived in complete abstraction from the system of the universe, and that it is the business of speculative philosophy to exhibit this truth. This character is its coherence. — Alfred North Whitehead

Now, as it happens, theology is actually a pitilessly demanding discipline concerning an immense, profoundly sophisticated legacy of hermeneutics, dialectics, and logic; it deals in minute detail with a vast variety of concrete historical data; over the centuries, it has incubated speculative systems of extraordinary rigor and intricacy, many of whose questions and methods continue to inform contemporary philosophy; and it does, when all is said and done, constitute the single intellectual, moral, spiritual, and cultural tradition uniting the classical, medieval, and early modern worlds. — David Bentley Hart

At first sight nothing seems more obvious than that everything has a beginning and an end, and that everything can be subdivided into smaller parts. Nevertheless, for entirely speculative reasons the philosophers of Antiquity, especially the Stoics, concluded this concept to be quite unnecessary. The prodigious development of physics has now reached the same conclusion as those philosophers, Empedocles and Democritus in particular, who lived around 500 B.C.E. and for whom even ancient man had a lively admiration. — Svante Arrhenius

It must not be forgotten that reason too needs to be sustained in all its searching by trusting dialogue and sincere friendship. A climate of suspicion and distrust, which can beset speculative research, ignores the teaching of the ancient philosophers who proposed friendship as one of the most appropriate contexts for sound philosophical enquiry. — Pope John Paul II

Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me. It restored my faith when I was a boy, tended me as a teenager, and when I was a young man the bar embraced me. — J.R. Moehringer

I want to be better."
"Then be better. Accept the fact that God didn't bring you this far only to abandon you. He isn't that kind of father. And you won't be either. — Sylvain Reynard

Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme. — Charles Hartshorne

The whole interest of my reason, whether speculative or practical, is concentrated in the three following questions: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? (Critique of Pure Reason — Immanuel Kant

This doctrine of necessity in universality means that there is an essence to the universe which forbids relationships beyond itself, as a violation of its rationality. Speculative philosophy seeks that essence. — Alfred North Whitehead

The worst speculative Sceptic ever I knew, was a much better Man than the best superstitious Devotee & Bigot."
"I must inform you, too, that this was the way of thinking of the Antients on this Subject. If a Man made Proffession of Philosophy, whatever his Sect was, they alaways expected to find more Regulaity in his Life and Manners, than in those of ignorant & illiterate. — David Hume

My constellations are not made from the stars, but from the spaces between the stars. The dark places. The open places, where your mind can travel forever and ever. — T.A. Barron

Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about. — Bob Dylan