"As to what [philosophers] meant by continuity and discreteness, they preserved a discreet and continuous silence..."

- Bertrand Russell

Y'know he was real proud when he came up with this one.

To the Realists:

Ye sober beings who feel yourselves armed against passion and fantasy,
and would gladly make a pride and an ornament out of your emptiness, you call yourselves realists, and give to understand that the world is actually constituted as it appears to you

before you alone reality stands unveiled, and you yourselves would perhaps be the best part of it, -oh, you dear images of Sais!

But are not you also in your unveiled condition still extremely passionate and dusky beings compared with the fish, and still all too like an enamoured artist ? *-and what is "reality" to an enamoured artist!
You still carry about with you the valuations of things which had their origin in the passions and infatuations of earlier centuries! There is still a secret and ineffaceable drunkenness embodied in your sobriety! Your love of "reality," for example

-oh, that is an old, primitive " love "! — Gay Science 57

It was previously explained that what is commonly called love is a state of reaching out for possession. It's a state of dissatisfaction. Possession has to do with identity and power.

Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing. – Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

It was only a matter of time.

Whenever one believes in a great first principle, one can no longer produce anything but huge sterile dualisms. Philosophers willingly surrender themselves to this and centre their discussions on what should be the first principle (Being, the Ego, the Sensible? ... ). But it is not really worth invoking the concrete richness of the sensible if it is only to make it into an abstract principle. In fact the first principle is always a mask, a simple image. That does not exist, things do not start to move and come alive until the level of the second, third, fourth principle, and these are no longer even principles. Things do not begin to live except in the middle.

- Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, "On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature", Dialogues II

WB Yeats "The Second Coming"

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

(end of 1st stanza)

A philosophic theory is a developed question, and nothing other. By itself, in itself, it consists not in resolving a problem, but in developing to its limit the necessary implications of a formulated question. It shows us what things are, what they would have to be, supposing that the question is a good and rigorous one. To place in question means to subordinate, to submit things to the question in such a way that, in this constrained and forced submission, they reveal an essence, a nature. To criticize the question means to show under what conditions it is possible and well-posed, that is, how things would not be what they are if the question were not posed in that way. Which is to say... there is no critique of solutions, but only a critique of problems.

- Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
-- Emerson

What does a bear bear?

What does a bear bear? — Sapientia

A bear is bare and so bears nothing.

They bare their teeth sometimes.

No, bare bears bear bare bears, and bare bears that bare bears bear bear beer.

Even though they're rare, you'd best prepare for the werebears there.

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but this is where the bare swearing about bears and werebears is barely something I want barreling down on me, even from behind a barricade. It's as if I were being berated with ball-bearings the size of berries.

You're all positively barbearic.

“It is said that what is called "the spirit of an age" is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation.”
― Tsunetomo Yamamoto

“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. There will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.”
― Tsunetomo Yamamoto

Concerning bears.

"The immediate disqualification of historical arguments as instances of “the genetic fallacy” often misses the point that a historical narrative is intended to make. Historical arguments often have a completely different aim and structure from purported refutations. They are not in the first instance intended to support or refute a thesis; rather, they aim to change the structure of argument by directing attention to a new set of relevant questions that need to be asked. They are contributions not to finding out whether this or that argument is invalid or poorly supported, but to trying to change the questions people ask about concepts and arguments. One of the effects that one type of historical account ought to have is that of causing it to seem naïve or “unphilosophical” simply to make a certain set of assumptions ...Historical enquiry will not by itself necessarily ensure that one asks the right ones, but it can contribute to helping to avoid certain ways of thinking that will lead only to confusion."

- Raymond Geuss

One might almost say that oversimplification is the occupational hazard of a philosophy, if it were not the occupation. — J. L. Austin

"Theory depicts a world that does not quite exist, a world that is not quite the one we inhabit. An interval between the actual and the theoretical is crucial insofar as theory does not simply decipher the world, but recodes it in order to reveal something of the meanings and incoherencies with which we live. This is not simply to say that political and social theory describe reality abstractly. At their best, they conjure relations and meanings that illuminate the real or that help us recognize the real, but this occurs in grammars and formulations other than those of the real."

- Wendy Brown

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet

Franz Kafka

I'll pull a Hanover and quote myself:

Knowledge of logical fallacies are more often than not used to defend one's own views instead of entertaining new ones.

Knowledge of logical fallacies are more often than not used to defend one's own views instead of entertaining new ones. — Question

That strikes me as one of those quotes that might sound good superficially, but upon analysis makes little sense. There's a problem with the grammar of it, and knowledge of logical fallacies is more often than not used to identify faults in the reasoning of others, rather than to defend one's own views. The "are" should be an "is", and that last part, "...instead of entertaining new ones" needs to be reworded. Maybe "...instead of being used to entertain new ones", but it seems odd to suggest that knowledge of logical fallacies should be used in that way.

"The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history(….) Real historical understanding is not achieved by the subordination of the past to the present, but rather by our making the past our present and attempting to see life with the eyes of another century than our own. It is not reached by assuming that our own age is the absolute to which Luther and Calvin and their generation are only relative; it is only reached by fully accepting the fact that their generation was as valid as our generation, their issues as momentous as our issues and their day as full and vital to them as our day is to us."

- Herbert Butterfield [The Whig Interpretation of History]

I think the biggest problem with it is that it's a truism. We tend to argue for our own views, so our knowledge about fallacies will obviously be used in the service of those views. Maybe Q could have put it a bit more strongly and more interestingly by saying that we never turn our eye for logical fallacies on to ourselves, or something like that.

(When you quote yourself, you're asking for a kicking)

Maybe Q could have put it a bit more strongly and more interestingly by saying that we never turn our eye for logical fallacies on to ourselves, or something like that. — jamalrob

Well, that would only apply to a solipsist, wouldn't you say? Therefore, everything a solipsist says is a truism...

I think the biggest problem with it is that it's a truism. We tend to argue for our own views, so our knowledge about fallacies will obviously be used in the service of those views. Maybe Q could have put it a bit more strongly and more interestingly by saying that we never turn our eye for logical fallacies on to ourselves, or something like that.

(When you quote yourself, you're asking for a kicking) — jamalrob

Yes, I agree that that would be a better way to word it. Maybe Question could hire someone like you as a ghost quote-maker. :D

The "are" should be an "is" — Sapientia

Strangely enough, it was originally an 'is' instead of an 'are', but Grammarly corrected it to 'are' from 'is', and for whatever reason, 'are' sounds right to me...

and that last part, "...instead of entertaining new ones" needs to be reworded. Maybe "...instead of being used to entertain new ones" — Sapientia

Yeah, with that I agree.

Maybe Q could have put it a bit more strongly and more interestingly by saying that we never turn our eye for logical fallacies on to ourselves, or something like that. — jamalrob

And here I was thinking you were talking about the Q continuum.