John > John's Quotes

“Philosophy, the love of Wisdom, is at the very bottom defence against the incomprehensible.”
― Oswald Spengler

“Certainty is not to be had. But as we learn this we become not more moral but more resigned. We become nihilists.”
― Allen Wheelis, Moralist

“To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.”
― HEGEL

“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
― Georg Hegel

“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”
― Yukio Mishima

“In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.”
― William Burroughs

“[L]e philosophe n'a jamais tué de prêtres et le prêtre a tué beaucoup de philosophes...

(The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.)”
― Denis Diderot, Political Writings

“Optimism is cowardice.”
― Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life

“Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”
― Emil Cioran

“A book is a suicide postponed.”
― Cioran

“To live entirely without a goal! I have glimpsed this state, and have often attained it, without managing to remain there: I am too weak for such happiness.”
― Émile Michel Cioran

“A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.”
― Emil Cioran

“The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.”
― Emil Cioran

“Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.”
― Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with an evil thought, suffering follows him as the wheel follows the hoof of the beast that draws the wagon.... If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.”
― Gautama Buddha

“Doubt everything. Find your own light.”
― Gautama Buddha, Sayings of Buddha

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”
― Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
― Immanuel Kant

“Despite its successes, in the end, philosophical thinking always falls short of its real goal. It involves both the wonder of aspiring toward the Truth and the distress of falling short of that Truth. In this way, philosophy can be characterized as wondrous distress.”
― John Marmysz, The Path of Philosophy: Truth, Wonder, and Distress

“Though nihilism has been relentlessly criticized for overemphasizing the dark side of human experience, it might be equally true that this overemphasis represents a needed counterbalance to shallow optimism and arrogant confidence in human power. Nihilism reminds us that we are not gods, and that despite all of the accomplishments and wonders of civilization, humans cannot alter the fact that they possess only a finite amount of mastery and control over their own destinies.”
― John Marmysz, Laughing at Nothing: Humor as a Response to Nihilism

“The smallest feline is a masterpiece.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“The things you used to own, now they own you.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.”
― John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism