Not Exactly For The Quote-A-Day Calendar
You know those quote-a-day calendars? The ones that have inspirational or ponder-provoking messages like:
Oh wait, not like that. Rather, like this:
Sometimes philosophers end up on these things, or in similar collections of quotes, because they’ve supposedly said something that’s interpreted as inspirational or moving. For example:
I’m pretty sure that Aristotle didn’t say exactly that, and I’m more than pretty sure he didn’t say it about sofas, but you get the gist, and if you’d like you can get the above as a large wall decal.
Sometimes the quotes are accurate, though for some of them it is puzzling why they’re included alongside Disneyisms like “If you can dream it, you can do it.” The latest example of this is from Yale University Press. Behold the following from their Facebook feed:
Ponder that, people. Can you feel the ontology move you?
This, of course, requires a response, and the best one I can think of is for us to find other quotes from philosophers that can be snuck into collections of inspirational or wonder-inducing quotes, despite not meaning anything inspirational at all. The best ones will have the largest gap between their inspirational impression and relatively dispassionate meaning.
(via Matt McAdam)
Related: “Motivational” Posters from Philosophers.
Nothing is impossible. — Parmenides
“god is dead”
“There’s no success like failure and failure’s no success at all.” Bob Dylan
1 The world is everything that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts.
2.02 The object is simple.
2.024 Substance is what exists independently of what is the case.
2.1 We make to ourselves pictures of facts.
3.01 The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world.
5.473 Logic must take care of itself.
5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
5.621 The world and life are one.
5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.)
6.13 Logic is not a theory but a reflexion of the world. Logic is transcendental.
6.421 … Ethics are transcendental. (Ethics and æsthetics are one.)
6.5 …The riddle does not exist.
7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
“Paradise on the cheap, like the famous free lunch, is not to be had.” -David Lewis
The extended quote would also be suitable for a larger post: “Paradise on the cheap, like the famous free lunch, is not to be had. Make of this what you will. Join the genuine modal realists; or foresake genuine and ersatz worlds alike.”
“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” —H. L. Mencken
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” —H. L. Mencken
“The only ‘ism’ that has justified itself is pessimism.” —George Orwell
(Imagine tearing off a boundlessly saccharine calendar sheet and being greeted thusly soon after waking.)
“Never mind mind, essence is not essential, and matter doesn’t matter”, Nelson Goodman.
“Is everything pointless?” – Frank Arntzenius.
(This is a discussion of “gunky ” theories of spacetime)
“Das Nichts nichtet” usually gets me out of bed in the morning.
A math camp that I have taught at on several occasions had a t-shirt focusing on the quote “existence is freedom”, by the mathematician David Hilbert. Well actually, it had the full sentence, but with those words in large print – “In mathematics, existence is freedom from contradiction.”
“One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies– but not before they have been hanged.”
Heinrich Heine
“Snow is white” is true iff snow is white. — Alfred Tarski
“That which doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” – Guess who?
Identities are necessary. – Kripke (para.)
“Wittgenstein might have been a shortstop.” — John Haugeland
“I spit upon the noble, and all those who vainly admire it, when
it produces no pleasure.” –Epicurus
“Go outside and enjoy the sunshine.”
“Don’t believe the hype.”
Leibniz: “everything happens for a reason”.
“Dogmas change and our knowledge is deceptive; but Nature never errs. Her procedure is sure, and she never conceals it.” – Arthur “show-’em-how-it’s-done” Schopenhauer.
“It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing” – Ellington
“Now, the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum, what might be right for you, may not be right for some…”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Is Yale UP misspelling Quine’s middle name some kind of dig at Harvard?
“To think is the only moral act.” – William James.
In context it means that there is no act of “will” distinct from the act of thinking about a given action, that is, I think about moving my arm and (given healthy neurology) my arm moves. I don’t think about moving my arm, and then have to say “make it so!”! Thus, to the extent we tend to think of moral-judgment worthy acts as willed actions, we should revise that assessment and think about them as thought-about actions, “to think is the only moral act.”
The cool part is, out of context it SOUNDS LIKE James is making some proto-Arendtian point here. If we think — if we avoid banality — we will be moral (good) people. That’s not what he is saying — and given how much thinking the Heideggers of the world do it doesn’t hold up. Sounds good, though.
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche
You cannot use fingers to demonstrate fingers not being fingers.
Chuang Tzu
Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
George Carlin