Czeslaw Milosz Quotes

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

We do not consider our principles as dogmas contained in books that are said to come from heaven. We derive our inspiration, not from heaven, or from an unseen world, but directly from life.

Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.

As for you, Private, if you mention a word of this to anyone, I'll feed you to the cat thing here. Understand?" "Yum," said Mogget. "Yes, sir!" mumbled the telephone operator, his hands shaking as he tried to smother the burning wreckage of his switchboard with a fire blanket.

The dementors send their love, Potter!

It has never been in my power to study anything, mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic .

Evil was coming. I wondered whose face it would be wearing.

And when you look along the way we've come, there are spirals of vultures wheeling.

Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul.

I definitely want to direct. This is just another learning experience for me, to get a chance to hear the questions and concerns the directors have, some of their fears. It's a team sport. You have to give everybody what they need so they are able to perform at their best.

The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.

Maybe I should call Aaya!(Shigure) If you call him...(Yuki) I'll make you eat that phone.(Kyou) -Shigure-san,Yuki-san, Kyou-kun Shoma

The ethic of truth is the complete opposite of an 'ethics of communication'. It is an ethic of the Real The ethic of truth is absolutely opposed to opinion, and to ethics in general.

I take as my fundamental starting point the fundamental distinction between work and interaction

Certainly the central Platonic idea, which is the idea of the ideas, these archetypal forms which stand outside of time is one which is confirmed by the psychedelic experience.

Why should I tell you?" he asked, with no small amount of petulance. "If you tell me, I will leave you alone," I said. "And if you don't tell me, I'm going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent." Now I could see the fright beneath the defiance.

Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood.

Philosophizing is a process of making sense out of experience.

You never see anyone wearing a black turtleneck and leather jacket doing something nice.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

Every great creative idea, formulated as a philosophy, has a social setting - in time, in a geographical location, in a political economy, in a matrix of interests and knowledge. It is not a free-swinging phenomenon like a balloon without moorings. It is not produced in a vacuum and, being creative, it does not work in a vacuum. Nurtured on things experienced and things known, it reaches out toward the unknown like a flower on a stalk growing out of the soil.

Only through communication can human life hold meaning.