Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics: Metaphysics purge the mind of the senses and cultivate the disembodiment of t...he spiritual; Poetry is all passionate and feeling and animates the inanimate; Metaphysics are most perfect when concerned with universals; Poetry, when most concerned with particulars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Upon the whole I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all of those difficulties, which have hitherto amused phil...osophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to our selves. That we have raised a dust, and then complain that we cannot see.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us of ...being bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You ask: What is it that philosophers have called qualitative states? I answer, only half in jest: As Louis Armstrong is said to h...ave said when asked what jazz is, 'If you got to ask, you ain't never gonna get to know.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or societ...y.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Chinese were born ... with an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplan...ted too young, these qualities ripened in them.... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates--but pages Might be filled up, as vainly as before,... With the sad usage of all sorts of sages, Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore! The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something tricklike about them. A lot disappears in order for something to sudde...nly appear in the palm of the hand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo pro...blems.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »