Philosophical Beliefs Quotes

About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort. I am a humanist, which mean, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead.

I belong to the political party that generally fits my philosophical beliefs, but I reserve the right to vote my conscience after careful deliberation. My voting record reflects this.

Governments, systems, ideologies come and go, but it is humanity which remains.

I don't really get philosophical, but I believe that nice people are strong and usually in my horror stories, I don't like to write about the old standard where some rotten guy gets chased by a mean spirit that gets him in the end.I'd rather write about nice people that are menaced from outside by some sort of evil power and who sort of slug it out.

I think there are a lot of people who are involved in the Tea Party who have very real and sincere concerns about spending that's out of control or generally philosophically believe that the government should be less involved in certain aspects of American life rather than more involved. And they have every right and obligation as citizens to be involved and engaged in this process.

In spirituality the Americans are very inferior to us. But their society is very superior to ours.

Are there not thousands who have loved virtue who did not accept Jesus Christ in any supernatural or miraculous fashion, who, if they knew of him at all, knew of him only as the Nazarene peasant - the man Jesus. Such was Abraham Lincoln, the tender prophet of the gospel of good will upon earth.

My philosophy is TRUTH unto me. Through expressing my individuality I become free.

The only people I've met in this world who never doubt are materialists and atheists.

But what do you believe? I don't just mean religion. What are you sure of?" "That once I was not and that now I am. That one day I shall no longer be.

By helping to raise man above the level of bestial vegetation, faith contributes in reality to the securing and safeguarding of his existence. Take away from present-day mankind its education-based, religious-dogmatic principles- or, practically speaking, ethical-moral principles- by abolishing this religious education, but without replacing it by an equivalent, and the result will be a grave shock to the foundations of their existence.

Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life... within a given age in a given society... a basis for evaluating human sentiments. If feelings bring people nearer to the religion's ideal... they are good; if these estrange them from it, and oppose it, they are bad.

If there are no victims in the U.S, then there no need to redistribute wealth. Right? So that needs to be repealed. If there are no victims, there's no need to confer legal status on 1.2 million illegal immigrants. If there are no victims, then the entire justification for liberalism ceases to exist. This is how far Barack Obama is willing to go. Nobody else but me is gonna think of this, but he's undercutting his own philosophical beliefs in order to put words in Mitt Romney's mouth.

There are no instances known to me of cultures having forsaken Truth or renounced the understanding in its widest sense.

They offer me neither food nor drink - intellectual nor spiritual consolation... [Conservatism] leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal; it conforms to no intellectual standard, it is not safe, or calculated to preserve from the spoilers that degree of civilization which we have already attained.

In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.

I'm not a religious person. I don't have any desire. To me it's imitative of a conventional culture. I'm all for it for anybody. I totally have a free and open feeling about how other humans want to live their lives. It's just not something that has any real significance for me.

I think that secular liberals need to recognize that they are still, often, hanging their worldview on what are metaphysical ideas.

The principles you live by create the world you live in; if you change the principles you live by, you will change your world.

There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.

We ought not to schismatize on either men or measures. Principles alone can justify that.

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

I have a lot of beliefs... and I live by none of them...

Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick.

I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher.