"To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality"
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Philosophical quotes
Philosophical
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Philosophical quotes (page 48 of 98)
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"The philosophical anthropologist ... can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer."
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"Slavery in America was perpetuated not merely by human badness but also by human blindness. ... Men convinced themselves that a system that was so economically profitable must be morally justifiable. ... Science was commandeered to prove the biological inferiority of the Negro. Even philosophical logic was manipulated [exemplified by] an Aristotlian syllogism: All men are made in the image of God; God, as everyone knows, is not a Negro; Therefore, the Negro is not a man."
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"Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday"
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"Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it."
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"A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about."
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"Logic must look after itself. In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic."
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"LIVE. If you live, god will live with you. If you refuse to run his risks, he'll retreat to that distant heaven and be merely a subject for philosophical speculation."
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"If you declare that you are naturally designed for such a diet, then first kill for yourself what you want to eat. Do it, however, only through your own resources, unaided by cleaver or cudgel or any kind of ax"
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"Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit."
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"Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates."
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"When a man is proud because he can understand and explain the writings of Chrysippus, say to yourself, 'if Chrysippus had not written obscurely, this man would have had nothing to be proud of.'"
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"I know that previously I would not have dared to express myself so explicitly about so uncertain a matter. I can take this risk because I am now in my eighth decade, and the changing opinions of men scarcely impress me any more; the thoughts of the old masters are of greater value to me than the philosophical prejudices of the Western mind."
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"Nothing can be more real, or concern us more, than our own sentiments of pleasure and uneasiness; and if these be favourable to virtue and unfavourable to vice, no more can be requisite to the regulation of our conduct and behavior."
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"Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion?"
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"The conduct of a man, who studies philosophy in this careless manner, is more truly sceptical than that of any one, who feeling inhimself an inclination to it, is yet so over-whelm'd with doubts and scruples, as totally to reject it. A true sceptic will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as of his philosophical conviction; and will never refuse any innocent satisfaction, which offers itself, upon account of either of them."
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"We call 'Slavery is wrong' a moral truth because there is a specific history of theoretical investigation of a particular kind of slavery. We discussed it for centuries in metaphysical, economic, biological, and philosophical terms; we listened to all the arguments pro and con, we read all the testimonies of slaves and witnesses, and we decided. Though this 'we" is not everybody on earth, or even most people, who've never thought about slavery much."
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"It can be shown that a mathematical web of some kind can be woven about any universe containing several objects. The fact that our universe lends itself to mathematical treatment is not a fact of any great philosophical significance."
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"No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth"
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"For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history."
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