“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)
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William H. McNeill43
Canadian historian 1917–2016Related quotes
Bryan Magee (1930–2019) British politician
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."
Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector
The Greek Anthology (p. 59)
Classics Revisited (1968)
Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian
On Hinduism (2000)
Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure
Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 9
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist
Part II, Section 21 <br class="br"> 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.”
Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker
"Creation"
I'm a Born Liar (2003)
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher
...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
Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator
" Philosophy" (a lecture delivered at Columbia University in the series on science, philosophy and art, March 4, 1908) https://archive.org/details/philosophyalect00butlgoog"