Category: Thought

The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.

What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Éloge de la philosophie (1953; In Praise of Philosophy, 1963), p. 5.

The totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts.

Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book VIII.

Machiavelli is the complete contrary of a machiavellian, since he describes the tricks of power and “gives the whole show away.” The seducer and the politician, who live in the dialectic and have a feeling and instinct for it, try their best to keep it hidden.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Éloge de la philosophie (1953; In Praise of Philosophy, 1963), p. 59.

The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I.

Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process…

The history of literature is the history of the human mind.

William H. Prescott, “Chateaubriand’s English Literature” in Biographical and Critical Miscellanies (1845), p. 245.

Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought.

Outlets like Time magazine tell us eating bugs is the solution to all of your problems, and, you know, the people telling you to do it aren’t doing it themselves, as always, but they want you to eat bugs. That’s why recently I’ve come to the realization of something: It’s not enough to not eat bugs; you have to be anti-bug-eating. And that requires action against the bug-eating movement — “Big Bug.” The best way to do this is to eat more meat.

Matt Walsh, on his podcast touting a sponsor, GoodRanchers.com/WALSH.

The one thing that the master craftsman envies in the apprentice is his fire.

H.L. Gold, The Fifth Galaxy Reader (1961), p. xi.