Western Philosophy Quotes

“(When asked what he thought of Western civilization): 'I think it would be a good idea.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“All sorts of things in this world behave like mirrors.”
― Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955

“All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn't drink, they didn't smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.”
― John Wayne

“Ours is a shockingly dead view of creation. We ourselves are the only things in the universe to which we grant an authentic vitality, and because of this we are not fully alive.”
― Frederick Turner

“Globalization by the way of McDonald’s and KFC has captured the hearts, the minds, and from what I can see through the window, the growing bellies of the folks here.”
― Raquel Cepeda, Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina

“Western philosophy must be discussed; eastern philosophy must be experienced.”
― Adriano Bulla

“Girls should be taught at school that giving birth to an unnaturally over-sized western baby that no longer fits down the birth canal may lead to a multitude of long term health problems.”
― Steven Magee

“A ship which looms large in the river seems tiny when on the ocean.”
― Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

“The Dialogues remain one of the priceless treasures of the world. The best of them, The Republic, is a complete treatise in itself, Plato reduced to a book; here we shall find his metaphysics, his theology, his ethics, his psychology, his pedagogy, his politics, his theory of art.

He we shall find problems reeking with modernity and contemporary savor: communism and socialism, feminism and birth-control and eugenics, Nietzschean problems of morality and aristocracy, Rousseauian problems of return to nature and libertarian education, Bergsonian elan vital and Freudian psychoanalysis - everything is here.

It is a feast for the elite, served by unstinting host. "Plato is philosophy and philosophy is Plato" says Emerson; and awards to The Republic of Omar about the Koran: "Burn the libraries, for their value is in this book.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“You haven’t realized it yet but your life is precious. I always say that people should not do something that has no purpose. Is there a purpose behind your actions? Of course there is a purpose behind your decision to step into this bamboo forest. That is why your life is not meaningless.
--The Unnamed Samurai (Chapter 5)”
― Melissa Rose Lawrence, The Autumnal Winds

“The view that Hegel represents a kind of summation of major strands in the Western tradition is not without some truth. This being so, if we wish to follow in his footsteps, we must strive for as comprehensive and nuanced an understanding of the possibilities of the philosophical tradition as he had. Obviously, this is extraordinarily difficult; it is Hegel's greatness that has made things more difficult for metaphysics rather than easier. To be a great metaphysician is not only to release essential possibilities of thinking, it is to cast a shadow over descendent thinkers under which they must struggle for light. Excess of light blinds eyes unused to the surplus of greatness.”
― William Desmond

“The injunction to know oneself can be found in many traditions, including the Western philosophical tradition that goes back to Socrates. According to Zen, however, to truly discover what the self is, we need a more direct path than mere intellectual reasoning.”
― Bret W Davis, Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism