William James Quotes

Do I believe in God? Can't answer, I'm afraid. I'm not being flippant, but I don't understand the question. What is it that I am supposed to believe or not believe in? Are you asking whether I believe there is something not in the universe (or the universes, if there are (maybe infinitely) many of them), and that somehow stands above them? I've never heard of any reason for believing that.

Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest.

From my undergraduate days, I've always been interested in the major philosophical questions that don't seem to have an answer that everyone agrees on.

We're on this planet for the briefest of moments in cosmic terms, and I want to spend that time thinking about what I consider the deepest questions.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

I think we're in the time when the metaphysical world is so interesting.

Philosophy is an attempt by man to find cause and effect. Religion has the same goal.

The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.

To think Being itself explicitly requires disregarding Being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of beings and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics.

It's not even a question of whether the universe is meaningful or meaningless. It's in what way could it be meaningful, or in what way, if it was meaningful, could that be even more meaningless than normal meaninglessness?

Western Humanism does not ask the fundamental questions about the meaning and limits of personal experience. Humsniists leave aside the mysteries of contingency and transitoriness, for the certainties of research, production, consumption.

Quite early on, and certainly since I started writing, I found that philosophical questions occupied me more than any other kind. I hadn't really thought of them as being philosophical questions, but one rapidly comes to an understanding that philosophy's only really about two questions: 'What is true?' and 'What is good?'

There are big questions science doesn't answer, such as why is there something rather than nothing? There can't be a scientific answer to that because it's the answer that precedes science.

All of the Flying Lotus records are exploring similar themes: These questions in my mind about what's next and what's beyond.

Morandi gave an intimate view of his deepest thoughts. We watched him inquiring after the devilish questions of essences and substances.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.

Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.

Only superficial minds approach an idea with delicacy.

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine - Unweave a rainbow.

I am all that there is of the most real.

There is One God. We have an epistemic center. There is meaning.

Learning philosophy is learning a particular kind of intuitive understanding.

He who hears not me but the logos will say: All is one.