"Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience."
(Felix Adler, philosopher, Columbia University professor / 1895-1960)
"My studies in Speculative philosophy, metaphysics, and science are all summed up in the image of a mouse called man running in and out of every hole in the Cosmos hunting for the Absolute Cheese."
(Benjamin De Casseres / American poet / 1873-1945)
"Therefore, philosophy does not give sense in mind happiness. It keeps in mind the only truth. However, it is very possible that the truth may be painful, may be distressing, may be destructive of happiness or makes it impossible. Religion, unlike philosophy, is under the category of the useful one. It promises happiness and says what it is necessary to do and what it is necessary to be to deserve or to obtain it. Consequently, illusion is more important than truth if it gets happiness."
(Marcel Conche, French philosopher / born in 1922 / Sense of Philosophy)
"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
(HH the Dalai Lama / born in 1935)
"When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science."
(Charles Darwin / 1809-1882 / quoted from Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 2002)
"The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation."
(Emma Goldman / 1869-1940)
"How orderly philosophical is the landscape, are all the inhabitants of this World! It is the creation of a god who "ever plays the geometer."
(Aldous Huxley / 1894-1963 / Music at Night)
"Who lives as a citizen, may write as a philosopher - but write as a philosopher, it is to teach materialism!"
(Julien Offray de La Mettrie / 1709-1751 / Preliminary Discourse)
"God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs."
(Georg Christoph Lichtenberg / 1742-1799)
"If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that's okay, he's God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality, decency, justice and humanness warped beyond recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching the opposite."
(Dennis McKinsey / newsletter Biblical Errancy)
"The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be booted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle."
(John Stuart Mill / 1806-1873 / The Spirit Of The Age)
"To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it."
(Bertrand Russell / 1872-1970)