“Christian theology was a revised version of Greek philosophy and the effort Plato and his heirs made to discern the permanent behind the sensible, the Ideal and the Real behind the world of individual things — ever in flux, becoming and decaying and never, ever reliably and completely True.”
Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
William H. McNeill 43
Canadian historian 1917–2016Related quotes
Source: Confessions of a Philosopher (1997), p. 232
Context: The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers. Each of us emerges from the preconsciousness of babyhood and simply finds himself here, in it, in the world. That experience alone astonishes some people. What is all this — what is the world? And what are we? From the beginning of humanity some have been under a compulsion to ask these questions, and have felt a craving for the answers. This is what is really meant by any such phrase as "mankind's need for metaphysics."
The Greek Anthology (p. 59)
Classics Revisited (1968)

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 9

Part II, Section 21
Principles of Philosophy of the Future http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/index.htm (1843)

“A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.”
"Creation"
I'm a Born Liar (2003)

...der Wille zur »wahren Welt« im Sinne Platons und des Christentums … ist in Wahrheit ein Neinsagen zu unserer hiesigen Welt, in der gerade die Kunst heimisch ist.
Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 74

" Philosophy" (a lecture delivered at Columbia University in the series on science, philosophy and art, March 4, 1908) https://archive.org/details/philosophyalect00butlgoog"