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[philosophybits]

The Way has its reality and its signs but is without action or form. You can hand it down, but you cannot receive it; you can get it, but you cannot see it. It is its own source, its own root. Before Heaven and earth existed, it was there, firm from ancient times. It gave spirituality to the spirits and to God; it gave birth to Heaven and to earth. It exists beyond the highest point, and yet you cannot call it lofty; it exists beneath the limit of the six directions, and yet you cannot call it deep. It was born before Heaven and earth, and yet you cannot say it has been there for long; it is earlier than the earliest time, and yet you cannot call it old.

Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, Watson tr. (Ch 6)

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“Philosophizing is: rejecting false arguments.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951

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The person who lives without folly is not as wise as he thinks.

François de La Rochefoucauld, Moral Reflections

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“There ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.”

— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

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The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or colour, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever.

Simone Weil, "Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation"

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“Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.”

— Blaise Pascal, Pensées

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“This state of ‘no-mind’ exists, as it were, on a knife-edge between the carelessness of the average sensual man and the strained over-eagerness of the zealot for salvation. To achieve it, one must walk delicately and, to maintain it, must learn to combine the most intense alertness with a tranquil and self-denying passivity, the most indomitable determination with a perfect submission to the leadings of the spirit.”

— Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

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“The only thought to liberate the mind is that which leaves it alone, certain of its limits and of its impending end. No doctrine tempts it. It awaits the ripening of the work and of life.”

— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

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Discussions of the way in which truth is correspondence to reality float free of discussions of what there is in heaven and earth. No roads lead from the project of giving truth-conditions for the sentences of English (English as it is spoken, containing all sorts of theories about all sorts of things) to criteria for theory-choice or to the construction of a canonical notation which "limns the true and ultimate structure of reality." Correspondence, for Davidson, is a relation which has no ontological preferences — it can tie any sort of word to any sort of thing. This neutrality is an expression of the fact that, in a Davidsonian view, nature has no preferred way of being represented, and thus no interest in a canonical notation. Nor can nature be corresponded to better or worse, save in the simple sense that we can have more or fewer true beliefs.

Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

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“The cause of anger is the belief that we are injured; this belief, therefore, should not be lightly entertained. We ought not to fly into a rage even when the injury appears to be open and distinct: for some false things bear the semblance of truth. We should always allow some time to elapse, for time discloses the truth.”

— Seneca, On Anger

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No one ever comes back from the dead, no one ever enters the world without weeping; no one is asked when he wishes to enter life, no one is asked when he wishes to leave.

Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

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“Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written in Sweden

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In all institutions that are not open to the biting air of public criticism an innocent corruption flourishes like a fungus (as, for example, in learned bodies and senates).

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 468

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“Love is wise – Hatred is foolish.”

— Bertrand Russell, BBC interview on “Face to Face” (1959)

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As long as blow is followed by counter-blow, catastrophe is perpetuated.

Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 33

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“The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once.”

— F. H. Bradley, Aphorisms

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Polemic, or the art of throwing eggs, is ... as highly skilled a job as, say, boxing... keep your face straight and throw them well! The difficulty is: not to make superfluous noises or gestures, which don’t harm the other man but only yourself.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Recollections of Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees, ed.