Philosophy Bits

“Film constantly reenacts and dramatizes this struggle with time: except in film, time loses. We are victorious. Narrative is victorious. We bend time to our will.”

— Zadie Smith, Feel Free

“Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.”

— Simone Weil, "The Iliad or The Poem of Force"

“It is by receiving compassion that others can become more empathetic and compassionate. Compassion follows from awareness, and awareness follows from compassion.”

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The great works of art and philosophical constructions have remained uncomprehended not through their too great distance from the heart of human experience, but the opposite.”

— Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia

“What has become alien to men is the human component of culture, its closest part, which upholds them against the world...

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“We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.”

— Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

“When the attention has revealed the contradiction in something on which it has been fixed, a kind of loosening takes place. By persevering in this course we attain detachment.”

— Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

“Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

“You see how the world works and you want it to be different. You know there must be another way. A way that would be more equitable and just. A way that would greatly reduce unnecessary pain and suffering. A way that would provide more joyful and fulfilling lives for everyone.”

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the most insignificant of men are not altogether so worthless as we imagine. They may not be fit to occupy government positions or professorial chairs, but they are often extremely at home on Parnassus and such high places.”

— Lev Shestov, All Things Are Possible

“A poet is, on the one hand, among the elect; on the other hand, he is one of the most insignificant of mortals. Hence we can draw a very consoling conclusion:

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“Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow.”

— Heraclitus, Fragments, B12

“Everything good was once new, consequently unfamiliar, contrary to custom, immoral, and gnawed at the heart of its fortunate inventor like a worm.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims

“A Warning You Must Heed”, etc. (141-145) You see how the world works and you want it to be different. You know there must be another way.

“When you think about what that life would be like for you, you feel an anxiety so powerful it verges on panic. There's a worry that will not subside, a worry that seems to originate in the depths of your soul. It's the worry that you are about to make a horrible mistake…”

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From Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers

“Just as there are people who, like the French fashion boutiques, put on show everything they have, so there are people in whom one keeps on suspecting something deep but where it nevertheless all turns out to be just like a muddy pond or mirror—everything reveals itself there.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

“It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore I shall be short.”

— David Hume, The History of England

“Anguish is what makes humankind, it seems; not anguish alone, but anguish transcended and the act of transcending it.”

— Georges Bataille, Erotism

“For we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them.”

— George Eliot, Middlemarch

“The work of compassion is complex and challenging but also endlessly rewarding. Solving the problem of suffering creates tangible results that can be seen and felt, and this provides a profound sense of purpose.”

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A soul conversant with virtue resembles a perpetual fountain; for it is clear, and gentle, and potable, and sweet, and communicative, and rich, and harmless, and innocent.”

— Epictetus, Fragments

“A life entangled with fortune resembles a wintry torrent; for it is turbulent, and muddy, and difficult to pass, and violent, and noisy, and of short continuance.

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“Foolishness keeps following us at every stage of life. If someone seems wise, it is only because his follies are in keeping with his age and circumstances.”

— François de La Rochefoucauld, Moral Reflections

“And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see — it is, rather, a light by which we may see — and what we see is life.”

— Robert Penn Warren, Saturday Review (22 March 1958)

a quite distinct natural gift, that of knowing how to apply general rules to particular cases, a gift the lack of which is called stupidity. So for Kant one can be both good and stupid; but for Aristotle stupidity of a certain kind precludes goodness.”

— Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

such banalities as ‘Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever’ and at another in such profundities as Kant’s distinction between the good will, the possession of which alone is both necessary and sufficient for moral worth, and what he took to be

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“According to Aristotle, excellence of character and intelligence cannot be separated. Here Aristotle expresses a view characteristically at odds with that dominant in the modern world. The modern view is expressed at one level in

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“When our doubt is unrestrained, we begin to trust nothing and no one, and we become afraid of the world around us. If this fear and distrust becomes all-encompassing, we descend into the abyss of cynicism, where we cannot see anything as real or valuable.”

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“The urgency of liberation is not the same for all; Marx has rightly said that it is only to the oppressed that it appears as immediately necessary.”

— Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

“Do something well, and that is quickly enough.”

— Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom