"Our knowledge being so narrow, as I have shown, it will perhaps give us some light into the present state of our minds if we look a little into the dark side, and take a view of our ignorance, which being infinitely larger than our knowledge may serve much to the quieting of disputes, and improvement of useful knowledge...

He that knows anything, knows this, in the first place, that he need not see long for instances of his ignorance...

The clearest and most enlarged understandings of thinking men find themselves puzzled and at a loss in every particle of matter... all the simple ideas we have are confined... to those we receive from corporeal objects by sensation...

But how much these few and narrow inlets are disproportionate to the vast whole extent of all beings, will not be hard to persuade those who are not so foolish as to think their span the measure of all things...

But to say and think there are no such, because we conceive nothing of them, is no better an argument than if a blind man should be positive in it, that there was no such thing as sight and colors, because he had no manner of idea of any such thing, nor could by any means frame to himself any notions about seeing.

The ignorance and the darkness that is in us no more hinders nor confines our knowledge that is in others, than the blindness of a mole is an argument against the quicksightedness of an eagle."

- John Locke

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 4.3.22

"Is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than the union of soul with body; by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one, that the most refined thought is able to actuate the grossest matter? Were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or control the planets in their orbit; this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension."

- David Hume

"Thinking of Melville, thinking of Poe, thinking of Mark Twain and Vachel Lindsay, thinking of Jack London and Tom Wolfe, one begins to feel there is almost no way of becoming a creative writer in America without being a loser.” ~Nelson Algren

*

"Everything in moderation, including moderation."
~Oscar Wilde

In view of the very different forms of technique, there is no question of a technical religion. But there is associated with it the feeling of the sacred, which expresses itself in different ways. The way differs from man to man, but for all men the feeling of the sacred is expressed in this marvelous instrument of the power instinct which is always joined to mystery and magic. The worker brags about his job because it offers him a joyous confirmation of his superiority. The young snob speeds along at 100 m.p.h. in his Porsche. The technician contemplates with satisfaction the gradients of his charts, no matter what their references is. For these men, technique is in every way sacred: it is the common expression of human power without which they would find themselves poor, alone, naked, and stripped of all pretensions. They would no longer be the heroes, geniuses, or archangels which a motor permits them to be at little expense. — Ellul

“The jar which Pandora brought was the jar of evils, and he takes the remaining evil for the greatest worldly good—it is hope, for Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man’s torment.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

*

Only in uncertainty
are we naked
and alive ...
~Peter Gabriel

"The only way in which a society can live for any length of time without violent strife is by establishing social justice, and social justice appears to each man to be injustice if he is persuaded that he is superior to his neighbors." ~Bertrand Russell

"As a loose definition, Left and Right populists share a profound hatred of indigenous social elites. Right populists in addition hate at least one other, 'foriegn' group of people."

- Wolfgang Streeck

My fav definition of populism I've come across. Also!:

"In the United States, the sacrosanct nature of dreams, never to be critically assessed, may be the most powerful impediment to political radicalization and collective action".

Kill your dreams.

"We are living in a world in which nobody is free, in which hardly anybody is secure, in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain alive." ~George Orwell

From William James:

The unwillingness of some of our critics to read any but the silliest of possible meanings into our statements is as discreditable to their imaginations as anything I know in recent philosophic history.

"It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood." ~Ursula Le Guin

"The ecstasies, the miseries, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious failures, the glorious victories. All of these things you'll never know simply because the word love isn't written into your book."
~Dr. McCoy to Spock, s3e21

https://philosophynow.org/issues/148/Iris_Murdoch_and_The_Mystery_of_Love ... :broken:

"A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man."
~Malcolm X

War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. — Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

The easier it looks
The harder it hooks
There ain't no such thing as
easy money — RLJ

If you make a man into a monkey, that monkey's gonna monkey around. — Delbert McClinton

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. — Blaise Pascal, Pensées

BILL MURRAY: "What did you study?"
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: "Philosophy."
BM: "Yeah, there's a good buck in that racket."
SJ: "Well, so far it's pro bono." — Lost in Translation (2003)

"Whereas notwithstanding it is most true that those corporeal qualities, which they think to be such real things existing in bodies without them, are for the most part fantastic and imaginary things, and have no more reality than the colours of the rainbow, and, as Plotinus expresseth it, 'have no reality at all in the objects without us, but only a seeming kind of entity in our fancies', and therefore are not absolutely any thing in themselves, but only relative to animals. So that they do in a manner mock us, when we conceive of them as things really existing without us*, being nothing but our own shadows, and the vital passive energies of our own souls."

- Ralph Cudworth A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality

*Italics added

You act like mortals in all you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

You act like mortals in all you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire. — Lucius Annaeus Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

Into the files.

The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself. — Albert Camus

"To be a philosopher you need only three things. First, infinite intellectual eros: endless curiosity about everything. Second, the ability to pay attention: to be rapt by what is in front of you without seizing it yourself, the care of concentration – in the way you might look closely, without touching, at the green lacewing fly, overwintering silently on the kitchen wall. Third, acceptance of pathlessness (aporia): that there may be no solutions to questions, only the clarification of their statement. Eros, attention, acceptance".

- Gillian Rose, Paradiso

You’ve been making the wrong mistakes. — Thelonius Monk

Men, throughout recorded time, have always told and retold two stories – that of a lost ship which searches the Meditteranean seas for a dearly loved island, and that of a God who is crucified in Golgotha. — Jorge Luis Borges

In the end, the existence of God is the only true problem in which all other problems are subsumed and minimized. At times, I think that we are always talking about God without realizing it. — Elie Wiesel

[T]he Voice of God [speaks] through silence and suffering. — Shusako Endo

I'm dying for a cigarette.

A poet looks at the world as a man looks as a woman. It's not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem. — Wallace Stevens

One must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is. For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. — James Baldwin

Under the rubric of 'Wisdom':

"Don't never buy nothin' what has a handle attached. It means work."

"Good, fast, cheap: pick any two."

"It depends."

Regards, stay safe 'n well.

Under the rubric of 'Wisdom': — Torus34

Why buy when you can rent the cow?
Why rent the cow when you can borrow her milk?
Why borrow her milk when you can steal some?
But why steal when you can live without?

Thus Spoke 180 Proof

Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love. — Beyond Good and Evil

:fire:

You may be a lover,
but you ain't no dancer! — Macca '68

.