P.S. I am not a fan of Wikipedia as a source. A website that will pull up "Bonfire of the Vanities" as a Tom Hanks movie and not an event in history has it's priorities gravely out of order.
I haven't much use for a door
But this walking around
Without touching the ground
Is getting to be quite a bore
These three philosophers, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche & Plato, have always spoken directly to my heart. Wittgenstein and Plato help me see clearly; Nietzsche helps me to really live.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:
So too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.
Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra: Live Dangerously.
Plato in The Republic: Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets....
And do you see, I said, men passinfamous philosophers quotesg along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent....
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images....
At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision...
He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?...
Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.
"an eye for an ey makes the whole world blind" Ghandi........"A true friend is one soul in two bodies" Aristotle........."Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action." William james
Most philosophers would rather notfamous philosophers quotes have their entire lifetime's work of understanding a complex world distilled down to a pithy saying, but it's fun so let's do it anyway.
When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you. -- Frederich Nietzsche We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed -- Thomas Jefferson It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both. -- Niccolo Machiavelli
All men by nature desire knowledge. ~ Aristotle
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. ~ Confucius
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. ~ Diogenes
im sorry you don't like Wikipedia, WTF does it have to do with your question?
1. Socrates: ’The unexamined life is not worth living.’
2. Warren S. McCulloch: ’Don’t bite my finger, look where it’s pointing.’
3. (Can’t remember) ’Shy and unready men are great betrayers of secrets; for there is no want so pressing as the want of something to say.
Should you ever come across in, glom on to ’The Harvest of a Quiet Eye: a Selection of Scientific Quotations,’ by Norman MacKay - not so much ’Scientific Quotations’ as ’Wise Snippets Gathered in a LifeTime of Observations.’ My copy is so precious that even if himself is reading it in bed, he has to leave it on my side the bed before switching the lights off.
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