Philosophical quotes that inspire...

Ignoring the flow of nature is following no way. Resisting the flow of nature is following the low way. Going with the flow of nature is following the middle way. Focusing the flow of nature is following the high way.

I will make company with creators, with harvesters, with rejoicers: I will show them the rainbow and the stairway to the Superman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

“I can’t go on, I will go on.”

Samuel Beckett

"it’s at times difficult to have such an important father because one feels so unimportant.”

Eduard Einstein

" I
knew it. I knew it, born in a hotel room, and God damn it, died in a hotel room."

Albert Einstein

Whispered before passing

“Do you know what punishments I’ve endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men’s most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn’t tolerate my existence.” - Brent Weeks

“It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.” - Friedrich Neechy

“Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.” - rorty

“Any person who is capable in angering you becomes your master”

Epictetus

“or fertilizer” - promethean75

“Can’t top that”

anonymous

“without mulch” - promethean75

“Mulch is more composted than fertilizer”

Alfred.E Newman

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. Buddha

Do not rebuke the mockers, or they will hate you; rebuke the wise, and they will love you.

– King Solomon

“A philosopher once asked, “Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?” Pointless, really…“Do the stars gaze back?” Now, that’s a question.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

:sad-teareye:
(shivers)

Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.
Elie Wiesel

Think higher, feel deeper.
Elie Wiesel

From The Ego and its Own; ‘political liberalism’.

This greater insight into the genesis of any ‘state’ - that it is only made possible by these terms - demands either a radical restructuring of the entire institution so that it does not require this essential conflict in order to exist… or the complete abandonment and dismissal of any attempt to establish it at all.

But this decision does not rest with the bourgeois, for they are not the makers of the state. Rather they emerge after it’s established, after it’s made possible out of the abundance of material productivity and wealth. And yet, ironically, it serves their interests more than the interests of those who made them possible in the first place.

The fundamental sham of the ‘state’ is just this embarrassing if not comical piece of logic, which stirner lays out quite masterfully throughout the essay(s). The strangeness of this insight has never struck anyone as much as the anarchist, the one who through virtue of reason and in such good taste simply refuses to participate in such an unprincipled sham.

And if and when the anarchist declares himself a nihilist in the company of philosophers and politicians, this is more of a general statement of withholding commitment to what these perceive as problems that can be addressed without first resolving the problem of the ‘state’. Hence, philosophical activity that does not involve itself here, first and foremost, is generically unworthy of receiving any real effort from the anarchist. since if the fundamental problem of the ‘state’ is not first resolved, no amount of philosophical floundering over the vast array of social, political and economic issues produced from within this essentially problematic superstructure will ever come to any resolution.

The kind of philosophical speculation one indulges in more often betrays the degree of attention and insight they are capable of having of problems that are actually worth any attention at all. This is expressed well when Marx says ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world… the point is to change it.’ but of course this is a comment made exclusively to the proletariat, for it is in his power alone to do this. Again, the bourgeois neither brings the state into existence or holds it together… but emerges as a by-product of the accumulated mistakes and errors of the working classes. Therefore only those who produce the ‘state’ have the power to change it. Or I should say ‘correct the errors they have made throughout history.’

Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome,or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die."
– Jacques Derrida

“Nietzsche was not a social theorist, but a poet, a rebel, and innovator. His aristocracy was neither of birth nor of purse; it was the spirit. In that respect Nietzsche was an anarchist, and all true anarchists were aristocrats.” - Emma Goldman

All in moderation. Especially moderation.