Leo Tolstoy Quotes

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Who are we? The answer to this question is not only one of the tasks but the task of science.

I think, just philosophically, we're made to explore.

Man by Nature desires to know.

The only basis for living is believing in life, loving it, and applying the whole force of one's intellect to know it better.

From the urgent way lovers want each other to the seeker's search for truth, all moving is from the mover. Every Pull Draws Us To The Ocean.

Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire.

The history of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness into light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, is no longer a man.

I'm not afraid to play the role of Christian Grey. Because I'm not like him. But I perfectly understand him. I never thought that he was a monster. He is simply woven from desires. As every one of us.

Man is the only one in whom the instinct of life falters long enough to enable it to ask the question "Why?

The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.

We cannot bear to regard ourselves simply as playthings of blind chance, we cannot admit to feeling ourselves abandoned.

In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

Born and nurtured when the human being first asked questions about the reason for things and their purpose, philosophy shows in different modes and forms that the desire for truth is part of human nature itself.

There is a desire of property in the sanest and best men, which Nature seems to have implanted as conservative of her works, and which is necessary to encourage and keep alive the arts.

I think a part of evolution is the desire to know yourself, and know the world you live in, and discover everything you can about the world you live in. That world can be the microcosm of your own emotions, or a society, or the cosmos. There's this constant desire for knowledge.

History teaches everything, even the future.

According to Maslow, I was stuck on the second level of the pyramid, unable to feel secure in my health and therefore unable to reach for love and respect and art and whatever else, which is, utter horseshit: The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness. Maslow's pyramid seemed to imply I was less human than other people, and most people seemed to agree with him.

For through wondering human beings now and in the beginning have been led to philosophizing.

The thing I am most aware of is my limits. And this is natural; for I never, or almost never, occupy the middle of my cage; my whole being surges toward the bars.

Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery.

The desire for order is the only order in the world.