Philosophy is an amazing tissue of really fine thinking and incredible, puerile mistakes. It's like one of those rubber 'bones' they give dogs to chew, damned good for the mind's teeth, but as food - no bloody good at all.
Olaf Stapledon
For the former, activity, any kind of activity, was an end in itself; for the latter, activity was but a progress toward the true end, which was rest, and peace of mind. Action was to be undertaken only when equilibrium was disturbed.
progress philosophy mind action peace rest true kind end
philosophy
Sitting there on the heather, on our planetary grain, I shrank from theabysses that opened up on every side, and in the future. The silentdarkness, the featureless unknown, were more dread than all the terrorsthat imagination had mustered. Peering, the mind could see nothing sure, nothing in all human experience to be grasped as certain, exceptuncertainty itself; nothing but obscurity gendered by a thick haze oftheories. Man's science was a mere mist of numbers; his philosophy but afog of words. His very perception of this rocky grain and all itswonders was but a shifting and a lying apparition. Even oneself, thatseeming-central fact, was a mere phantom, so deceptive, that the mosthonest of men must question his own honesty, so insubstantial that hemust even doubt his very existence.
philosophy metaphysics
There is much in this vision that will remind you of your mystics; yet between them and us there is far more difference than similarity, in respect both of the matter and the manner of our thought. For while they are confident that the cosmos is perfect, we are sure only that it is very beautiful. While they pass to their conclusion without the aid of intellect, we have used that staff every step of the way. Thus, even when in respect of conclusions we agree with your mystics rather than your plodding intellectuals, in respect of method we applaud most your intellectuals; for they scorned to deceive themselves with comfortable fantasies.
philosophy science religion thought
Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of the spheres, and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can never be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness. But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man.
philosophy science-fiction
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