Philosophy Bits

Interesting and insightful quotes from humanity's greatest minds! Curated by: @suliqyre Instagram/Threads: @philosophybits Bluesky: @philosophybits.com Mastodon: @[email protected]

[philosophybits]

“Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.”

— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

[philosophybits]

To fill a great vacancy is hard, because the past always seems better. It isn’t enough to equal your predecessor; the person who goes first has an advantage.

Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

[suliqyre]

Confronted by a new artwork, we automatically form an opinion of it. If the work gives us a positive feeling or at least attracts our attention, then we tend to judge it favourably.

When we encounter the same artwork many years later, we might be surprised to find that our opinion of it has shifted. We remember it in a way that it no longer seems to appear. This discrepancy causes us to wonder how we could have arrived at our previous judgment, when the work before us now seems so different.

But all that has happened is that we are seeing the artwork in a new context. The work is the same as before, but we are now different. We are more experienced than we used to be and also more aware. We are sensitive to a wider range of possibilities, not just in this artwork, but in all art, and in the world in general.

Read more...

[philosophybits]

“If a given science accidentally reached its goal, this would by no means stop the workers in the field, who would be driven past their goal by the sheer momentum of the illusion of unlimited progress.”

— Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

[philosophybits]

The continual repetition of a theme in philosophy is a result of two distinct causes. Either the author has discovered something, but he doesn't yet know himself quite what; and in this sense Kant's writings are rather musical. Or else the author has heard something new, but hasn't understood it properly; and in this sense the Kantians are the greatest musicians of literature.

Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments

[philosophybits]

“When one has once accepted and absorbed Evil, it no longer demands to be believed.”

— Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

[thirdity]

“The writer’s audience is chronological. The actor and dancer perform in the present; if their work exists in the future it exists as memory, as legend. Whereas the canvas, the bronze, and, more durably because they exist in multiple, the poem, the sonata, exist not as memory but as fact; the artists who work in these forms, scorned or overlooked in their own time, can still find an audience.”

— Louise Glück, Proofs and Theories

[philosophybits]

“An intelligent following of custom, or even occasionally an intelligent deviation from custom, is better than a blind and simply mechanical adhesion to it.”

— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

[philosophybits]

To be sure, if we were to imagine Beethoven suddenly returning and hearing one of his works rendered in the animated and nervous manner for which our masters of performance are celebrated, he would probably for a long time stay dumb, undecided whether to raise his hand in a blessing or a curse, but at length say perhaps: “Well, yes! That is neither I nor not-I but some third thing — and if it is not exactly right, it is nonetheless right in its own way. But you had better take care what you're doing, since it's you who have to listen to it ­and, as our Schiller says, the living are always in the right. So be in the right and let me depart again.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims, 126

[philosophybits]

“We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written in Sweden

[philosophybits]

A deep conviction is in itself a strong force, far more powerful than the most logical argumentation. Sometimes one has only to pronounce in a full, round, vibrating chest voice, such as is peculiar to people of conviction, some trifling sentence, and an audience hitherto unconvinced is carried away. Truth is often dumb, particularly a new truth, which is most shy of people, and which has a feeble, hoarse voice.

Lev Shestov, All Things Are Possible

[philosophybits]

“The highest good of those who follow virtue is common to all, and therefore all can equally rejoice therein.”

— Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

[thirdity]

“In science, restraint was necessary: there were questions that one was not allowed to put to the world — and he who nevertheless put them was like one who complained about a mirror whose reflection repeated his every movement but refused to reveal to him the volitional reason behind those movements.”

— Stanisław Lem, Fiasco

[philosophybits]

“The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

[philosophybits]

Aggressive, obstinate rejection of the system. The aphorism henceforth.

Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1942-1951

[suliqyre]

Everything is finally going right and you're feeling much better than usual. Far from pain and suffering, you're experiencing delight. A powerful feeling of pleasure, clarity, and peace has developed in you. You cannot ignore this feeling, which you realize must be joy.

But then you start to reflect on your experience. You compare your present experience to your past experiences and possible experiences yet to come. You want this moment of joy to last, but you know it's only temporary. You know that your situation will soon change and you will return to the pattern of ordinary life. You know that when this happens, joy will also leave you.

Before you get to experience it fully, your joy is being crowded out by the suffering of dread. You've become attached to a new desire to preserve joy, and this has immediately produced anxiety over its imminent departure. If you continue to think about this, your joy will be completely diluted by suffering, and you will suffer further from despair over your loss.

Read more...

[philosophybits]

“In my opinion, every rich man is a miser.”

— Michel de Montaigne, Essais