philosophybits: “Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.” — Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms ..read more

“False universality is what rubs the edges off all individual kinds of culture and takes as its basis the mediocre average. With true universality, on the other hand, art, for example, would become even more artificial than it is in its pure state, poetry would become more poetical, criticism more critical, history more historical, and so on. This universality can come into being when the simple light of religion and morality touches a chaos of combinative wit and fertilizes it. Then the most sublime poetry and philosophy burst into flower by themselves.” - Friedrich Schlegel, Ideas ..read more

philosophybits: “Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (2.14 ..read more

“A man when drunk is led by a boy, stumbling and not knowing where he goes, since his soul is wet. A ray of light the dry soul, wisest and best.” - Heraclitus, Fragments, B117 & B118 ..read more

philosophybits: “The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.” — Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays ..read more

thirdity: “Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?” — Rachel Carson, Silent Spring ..read more

“Men respond only faintly to the horrors that take place around them, except at moments, when the savage, crying incongruity and ghastliness of our condition suddenly reveals itself vivid before our eyes, and we are forced to know what we are. Then the ground slides away from under our feet.” - Lev Shestov, All Things Are Possible ..read more

philosophybits: “Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.” — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason ..read more

“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 ..read more

philosophybits: “Philosophizing is: rejecting false arguments.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951 ..read more