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The Big Picture
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Published Saturday, June 14, 2014 @ 6:17 PM EDT

Jun 14 2014

Categories: Philosophy, Photo of the day, Religion, Science

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Philosophically speaking
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Published Saturday, August 24, 2013 @ 12:00 AM EDT

Aug 24 2013

A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.
-Louis Pasteur

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-George Bernard Shaw

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A little philosophy makes a man an Atheist: a great deal converts him to religion.
-David Hume

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
-G.K. Chesterton

A philosopher always knows what to do until it happens to him.
-Unattributed

A philosopher is a person who doesn't care which side his bread is buttered on; he knows he eats both sides anyway.
-Dr. Joyce Brothers

A philosopher told me that, having examined the civil and political order of societies, he now studied nothing except the savages in the books of explorers, and children in everyday life.
-Nicolas Chamfort

A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problems than by its solution of them.
-Suzanne K. Langer

All philosophy lies in two words: sustain and abstain.
-Epictetus

All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.
-Lucretius

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
-Sydney J. Harris

Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
-David Hume

Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship. Then it moved to Greece and became a philosophy, then it went to Rome and became an institution, and then it went to Europe and became a government. Finally it came to America where we made it an enterprise.
-Richard Halverson

Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.
-Stephen Vizinczey

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.
-Diogenes

Doing something stupid once is just plain stupid. Doing something stupid twice is a philosophy.
-Dan O'Neill

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.
-Margaret Thatcher

Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass.
-Pierre Melville

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
-C.S. Lewis

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.
-David Hume

Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.
-C.S. Lewis

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
-Douglas Adams

History is Philosophy teaching by examples.
-Thucydides

I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson

I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time. (In the comic strip Peanuts)
-Charles M. Schulz

I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.
-Alice Roosevelt Longworth

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
-John Adams

I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.
-Carol Leifer

If the American Atheists Society or Saddam Hussein himself ever sent an unrestricted gift to any of my ministries, be assured I will operate on Billy Sunday's philosophy: The Devil's had it long enough, and quickly cash the check.
-Jerry Falwell

If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.
-Abigail Adams

In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way.
-Havelock Ellis

In the very books in which philosophers bid us scorn fame, they inscribe their names.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero

It is a function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.
-Murray Kempton

Libertarians secretly worried that ultimately someone will figure out the whole of their political philosophy boils down to "get off my property." News flash: This is not really a big secret to the rest of us.
-John Scalzi

My own philosophy is if you're not having sex, you're finished.
-Helen Gurley Brown

My studies in Speculative philosophy, metaphysics, and science are all summed up in the image of a mouse called man running in and out of every hole in the Cosmos hunting for the Absolute Cheese.
-Benjamin DeCasseres

My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson

Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.
-David Hume

Of course I believe that solipsism is the correct philosophy, but that's only one man's opinion.
-Melvin Fitting

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
-René Descartes

One of the strangest delusions of the Western mind is to the effect that a philosophy of profound wisdom is on tap in the East.
-H.L. Mencken

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.
-Richard P. Feynman

Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.
-Bertrand Russell

Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers, philosophy interprets.
-Albert Einstein

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
-Unattributed

Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex.
-Karl Marx

Philosophy! The lumber of the schools.
-Jonathan Swift

Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry begins and astrology ends, and astronomy begins.
-Christopher Hitchens

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
-Bertrand Russell

Secular humanism is avowedly non-religious. It is a eupraxsophy (good practical wisdom), which draws its basic principles and ethical values from science, ethics, and philosophy.
-Paul Kurtz

Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.
-Freda Adler

That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does a Falling Tree in the Forest Make a Sound if There's No One There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, "Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles."
-Terry Pratchett

The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubts.
-Morris Raphael Cohen

The highest point of philosophy is to be both wise and simple; this is the angelic life.
-John Chrysotom

The men who are not interested in philosophy need it the most urgently; they are the most helplessly in its power.
-Ayn Rand

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
-John Kenneth Galbraith

The purpose of a liberal education is to make you philosophical enough to accept the fact that you will never make much money.
-Unattributed

The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity and until they do (and find the cure) all ideal plans will fall into quicksand.
-Richard P. Feynman

The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
-John Gardner

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
-Albert Camus

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
-James Joyce

There is no record in human history of a happy philosopher.
-H.L. Mencken

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not said it.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero

There is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
-William James

There's a difference between a philosophy and a bumper sticker.
-Charles M. Schulz

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. (Life of Pi)
-Yann Martel

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
-John F. Kennedy

We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.
-Martin L. Gross

When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
-Walter Lippmann

While it is very sturdy of comfortable men to point out that life is unfair, the people it is unfair to are not apt to be morally or philosophically elevated by the announcement.
-Russell Baker

Categories: Philosophy, Quotes of the day

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Observations of the day
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Published Saturday, October 20, 2012 @ 8:15 AM EDT

Oct 20 2012

Get the full context: Read Jen Hatmaker's powerful post here.

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, Business as usual. But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.
-Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never- failing stream!
-Amos 5:21-24

Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations- I cannot bear your worthless assemblies… When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.
-Isaiah 1:13-17)

"Why have we fasted," they say, "and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?"... Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
-Isaiah 58:3-4, 6-7

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
-Micah 6:7-8

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.
-Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

Categories: Hypocrisy, Jen Hatmaker, Life of Pi, Observations, Philosophy, Quotes of the day, Religion, Yann Martel

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Quotes of the day: a quasi-cosmic perspective
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Published Friday, October 05, 2012 @ 12:55 AM EDT

Oct 05 2012

Quotes of the day- Neil deGrasse Tyson:

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (b. October 5, 1958) is the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and Visiting Research Scientist and Lecturer at Princeton University. Click for full bio.

(YouTube video: Neil deGrasse Tyson debunks the 2012 Mayan calendar apocalypse.)

As your area of knowledge increases, so does your perimeter of ignorance.

Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.

Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.

I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.

I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in the scientific method. Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.

I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.

If aliens did visit us, I'd be embarrassed to tell them we still dig fossil fuels from the ground as a source of energy.

If all that you see, do, measure and discover is the will of a deity, then ideas can never be proven wrong, you have no predictive power, and you are at a loss to understand the principles behind most of the fundamental interconnections of nature.

If pizza sizes were given in area not diameter, you'd see instantly that a seven inch is less than half the size of a ten inch pie

If scientists invented the legal system, eyewitness testimony would be inadmissible evidence.

In modern times, if the sole measure of what's out there flows from your five senses then a precarious life awaits you.

My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.

Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us. I don't know of any deeper spiritual feeling than what that brings upon me.

Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.

People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers.

Science is a philosophy of discovery. Intelligent design is a philosophy of ignorance.

Scientific inquiry shouldn't stop just because a reasonable explanation has apparently been found.

Seventy percent of Earth's surface is water and over 99 percent is uninhabited, so you would expect nearly all impactors to hit either the ocean or desolate regions on Earth's surface. So why do movie meteors have such good aim?

So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.

The atoms of our bodies are traceable to stars that manufactured them in their cores and exploded these enriched ingredients across our galaxy, billions of years ago. For this reason, we are biologically connected to every other living thing in the world. We are chemically connected to all molecules on Earth. And we are atomically connected to all atoms in the universe. We are not figuratively, but literally stardust.

The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.

The more I learn about the universe, the less convinced I am that there's any sort of benevolent force that has anything to do with it, at all.

The remarkable feature of physical laws is that they apply everywhere, whether or not you choose to believe in them. After the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.

There is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.

We fail in even the simplest of all scientific observations- nobody looks up anymore.

We spend the first year of children's lives teaching them how to walk and talk, and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down.

When scientifically investigating the natural world, the only thing worse than a blind believer is a seeing denier.

Whenever people have used religious documents to make accurate predictions about our base knowledge of the physical world, they have been famously wrong.

Within one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria (about 100 billion) than all humans who have ever been born. Yet many people continue to assert that it is we who are in charge of the world.

You don't take a dead cat to the vet. I mean you might, but why?

Categories: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Observations, Philosophy, Quotes of the day, Religion, Science, Video, YouTube

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Prose poem of the day
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Published Sunday, September 09, 2012 @ 7:44 AM EDT

Sep 09 2012

Desiderata (Latin: "desired things") is a 1927 prose poem by American writer Max Ehrmann (1872–1945). Largely unknown in the author's lifetime, the text became widely known after its use in a devotional, after subsequently being found at Adlai Stevenson's deathbed in 1965, and after spoken-word recordings in 1971 and 1972. Click for full Wikipedia article.

Go placidly amidst the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its shams, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann (September 26, 1872 - September 9, 1945)

Categories: Adlai E. Stevenson II, Max Ehrmann, Philosophy

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The truth sometimes disappoints
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Published Friday, May 11, 2012 @ 4:49 AM EDT

May 11 2012

Categories: Philosophy, Photo of the day

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Niccolò Machiavelli (May 3, 1469 – June 21, 1527):

Quotes of the day
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Published Thursday, May 03, 2012 @ 12:20 AM EDT

May 03 2012

A man attains an elevated position only when his mediocrity prevents him from being a threat to others. And for this reason a democracy is never governed by the most competent, but rather by those whose insignificance will not jeopardize anyone else's self-esteem.

For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearance, as though they were realities and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.

Hatred may be engendered by good deeds as well as bad ones.

I desire to go to Hell, not to Heaven. In Hell I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings and princes, but in Heaven are only beggars, monks, hermits and apostles.

It is far safer to be feared than loved.

Men [seldom] rise from low condition to high rank without employing either force or fraud, unless that rank should be attained either by gift or inheritance.

Politics have no relation to morals.

[Religions] have made men feeble and caused them to become an easy prey to evil minded men, who can control them more securely, seeing that the great body of men, for the sake of gaining Paradise, are more disposed to endure injuries than to avenge them.

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who profit by the preservation of the old and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new.
(In The Prince, 1513)

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

Whoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

Categories: Niccolò Machiavelli, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes of the day, Religion

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Your grasp of reality, forever changed...
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Published Thursday, April 19, 2012 @ 2:14 AM EDT

Apr 19 2012

Categories: Dogs, Observations, Philosophy, WTF?

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Fiona
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Published Tuesday, March 27, 2012 @ 6:23 AM EDT

Mar 27 2012

It takes something out of the ordinary to turn a crabby 57-year-old into a blubbering idiot. This did it.

(YouTube video: Fiona's amazing story.)

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me...

Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

Categories: Dogs, Philosophy, Religion

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