"Origin of man now proved. - Metaphysics must
flourish. - He who understands
baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke."
--Charles Darwin, 1 July 1838, Notebooks
--Contributed by: Sally Ferguson
"No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other."
--Bertrand Russell, Justice in War-Time
--Contributed by: Ian Arnold
"The ideas of freedom and democracy deteriorate into nothing but irrational faith once they are not based upon the productive experience of each individual but are presented to him by parties or states which force him to believe in these ideas."
--From Erich Fromm, "Man For Himself"
-- Contributed by: John H. Meador
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I....And if not now -- when?"
--Hillel
-- Contributed by: Dr. Mara Rainwater, Dublin, Ireland
"And this alone awaits you, when you dare to that sheer verge where horror hangs, and tremble against the falling rock; and, looking down, search the dark kingdom. It is to self you come, --and that is God. It is the seed of seeds: Seed for disastrous and immortal worlds. It is the answer that no questions asked.
-- From Conrad Aiken, "Preludes for Memnon or Preludes to Attitude," in Pathfinders by Gail Sheehy
-- Contributed by: Dr. Barry Arnold
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it."
-- Karl Marx
-- Contributed by: Chip Chism
"Often failure results in a dramatic investment in the future."
-- Contributed by: Marylou Ruud
". . . the red sun of desire and decision (the two things that create a live world)"
-- Humbert Humbert speaking in Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
-- Contributed by: Shelley Davis-Smith
"Only in love can woman harmoniously reconcile her eroticism and her narcissism. . . "
-- Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex
-- Contributed by: Shelley Davis-Smith
"If there is any science man really needs it is the one I teach, of how to occupy properly that place
in creation that is assigned to man, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man."
-- Immanuel Kant
-- Contributed by: John H. Meador
"A public is everything and nothing, the most dangerous of all powers and the most insignificant...."
-- Soren Kierkegaard
-- Contributed by: John H. Meador
"What does your conscience say? 'You should become him who you are'."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
-- Contributed by: John H. Meador
"On all sides I escape being and yet -- I am."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
-- Contributed by: John H. Meador
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