“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are!”
Quotes
The Darker the Night
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars…” (full quote)
Astonishment
“Astonishment is the root of philosophy.”
Circle of Knowledge
“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.”
– Einstein
A New Scientific Truth
“a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Doubt is not the opposite of faith
Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.
– Paul Tillich
3 Men
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
– Arnold Toynbee
If that is the case, then I request of the universe: three men.
Maybe now I’ll get one?
I recognize that is not the significance of this quote, but how could I resist?
Pain and Friends
I got this quote from an older gentleman, and at one level, it seems like a cheap quote. But the beating heart of it is so good.
“A trouble shared is but half a care, a joy shared is a joy doubled.”
As I’ve navigated pain, this gentlemen, and his wife (both in pain), have loved me. So his words and ideas mean a lot! Even the cheap quotes, soaked in truth.
Hermeneutics
I actually read this in relation to user experience design. But, being philosophical, its truth transcends, and I really appreciated it.
“To understand the whole of a book it is necessary to grasp its individual words and sentences, but those words and sentences only have meaning within the larger context of the book, hence interpretation must be a matter of constant revision: revising one’s sense of the whole as one grasps the individual parts, and revising one’s sense of the parts as the meaning of the whole emerges.” -Paul Kidder – Professor of Philosophy in Gadamer for Architects
Blindness and Wretchedness
“When I see the blindness and wretchedness of man, when I regard the whole silent universe, and man without light, left to himself, and as it were, lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who has put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him at death , and incapable of all knowledge, I become terrified…. And there upon I wonder how people in a condition so wretched do not fall into despair. I see other persons around me of a like nature. I ask them if they are better informed than I am. They tell me that they are not. And thereupon these wretched and lost beings, having looked around them and seen some pleasing objects, have given and attached themselves to them. For my own part, I have not been able to attach myself to them, and, considering how strongly it appears that there is something else than what I see, I have examined whether this God has not left some sign of Himself.”
-Blaise Pascal, “Pensees“
Musings 