Joseph Alexander Leighton Quotes

• The state is the nursing mother of human culture.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Mother, Nursing, Culture

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• Human progress is not an uninterrupted march forward. It is a slow and devious movement with haltings and twistings. The pathway of man ascends and descends, wanders off into mazes. At times the trail seems to lose itself in the wilderness of human passion and folly. But inch by inch it goes forward with halting steps.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Passion, Men, Progress

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• Life appears in a vast variety and innumerable succession of individual forms, since the most salient character of the universe is just that it ceaselessly gives birth to living individuals.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Life, Character, Giving

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1922). “Man and the Cosmos - An introduction to Metaphysics.”

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• The only religion which seems to have a function in time of war is the tribal religion which invokes a God as the exclusive protector of the nation which calls upon him.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  War, Function, Invoke

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• The more serious poetry of the race has a philosophical structure of thought. It contains beliefs and conceptions in regard to the nature of man and the universe, God and the soul, fate and providence, suffering, evil and destiny. Great poetry always has, like the higher religion, a metaphysical content. It deals with the same august issues, experiences and conceptions as metaphysics or first philosophy.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Fate

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1919). “The field of philosophy: an outline of lectures on introduction to philosophy”

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• Faith in the continuance and enhancement of the intrinsic values--faith in truth, in beauty, in friendship, in love and harmony of life--in short, faith in reason and the worth of spiritual life--such faith is only another name for faith in the persistence of spiritual individuality. For, I repeat, these values are real only as functions of personal experience and deed. To have faith in the permanence of intrinsic values is to assume the enduring reality of selves who know truth, feel beauty, who love and win spiritual harmony.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Spiritual, Real, Persistence

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• Today one might be tempted to say that patriotism is the last refuge of the tribal religion dedicated to the worship of German, French, English and Russian Gods of Battles. Surely such a religion has nothing in common with the religion which counsels for the disciple non-resistance, unstinted forgiveness, and the elimination of all rancor?

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Battle, Lasts, Resistance

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• Our obligation to the will of God is our obligation to the laws of practical reason.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Law, Reason, Obligation

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1901). “Typical Modern Conceptions of God: Or, The Absolute of German Romantic Idealism and of English Evolutionary Agnosticism, with a Constructive Essay”

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• A system of philosophy, or metaphysics, is a union of a world view and a life view in one harmonious, complete, integral conception. In so far as any man strives to attain, by rational inquiry, a consistent and comprehensive view of life and reality, he is a metaphysician.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Philosophy, Reality, Men

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1922). “Man and the Cosmos - An introduction to Metaphysics.”

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• Immediate knowledge tells us only that God is, not what he is. But if God is not an empty Being beyond the stars, he must be present in the communion of human spirits, and, in his relation to these, he is the One Spirit who pervades reality and thought. Hence there can be no final separation between our immediate consciousness of him and our mediated knowledge of reality.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Stars, Reality, Finals

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1901). “Typical Modern Conceptions of God: Or, The Absolute of German Romantic Idealism and of English Evolutionary Agnosticism, with a Constructive Essay”

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• No generation can do another generation's work for it. What we human beings can do at most is to mark out the pathway a little clearer for the generations to come after, and put legible signboards at the points where the greatest dangers have threatened us, in the hope that our posterity will read, understand, and be warned.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Littles, Pathways, Generations

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• If the spiritual values of human existence at its highest term of development and achievement do not endure, amidst all the changes and chances of this mortal universe, there seems to be no stable or coherent meaning in existence. Then the universe is irrational--indeed it is no universe at all.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Spiritual, Achievement, Development

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1922). “Man and the Cosmos - An introduction to Metaphysics.”

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• This is the very heart of true morality--not to struggle, not to fight with any weapons, for one's self alone--but to struggle and to fight for the common interest, to wield the power of brain and good right arm if need be for one's family, for the ordered community of life, for the state, for moral principles, humanity, and the common good.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Struggle, Heart, Fighting

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• Philosophy, like science, consists of theories or insights arrived at as a result of systemic reflection or reasoning in regard to the data of experience. It involves, therefore, the analysis of experience and the synthesis of the results of analysis into a comprehensive or unitary conception. Philosophy seeks a totality and harmony of reasoned insight into the nature and meaning of all the principal aspects of reality.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Philosophy, Reflection, Reality

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• It is doubtful whether our present system of popular education does not retard independent or self thinking as much as it promotes it. All genuine education is self-education. It will incite the individual to think for himself, by rethinking what the race's great thinkers have already thought for him, thus enabling him to go ahead under his own mental steam.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Independent, Thinking, Race

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1919). “The field of philosophy: an outline of lectures on introduction to philosophy”

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• God is a wider consciousness than we are, a pure intelligence, spiritual life and actuality. He is neither one nor many, neither man nor spirit. Such predicates belong only to finite beings.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Spiritual, Men, Consciousness

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1901). “Typical Modern Conceptions of God: Or, The Absolute of German Romantic Idealism and of English Evolutionary Agnosticism, with a Constructive Essay”

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• Science ... is organized common sense.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Common Sense, Common, Organized

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1919). “The field of philosophy: an outline of lectures on introduction to philosophy”

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• Death is not regarded as a natural affair by primitive man. Death is believed to be due to the intervention of some malevolent or at least not well disposed power. Normally it should not take place. So we have all through history crude explanations of death, as e.g., the influence of the serpent, the devil, sin.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Men, Primitive Man, Devil

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1918). “The Field of Philosophy: An Outline of Lectures on Introduction to Philosophy”

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• Skepticism literally means a thoughtful inquiry, the looking at a problem in a disinterested spirit, the surveying of a question from many sides. In this sense it is the very essence of philosophy and science.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Philosophy, Mean, Thoughtful

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1918). “The Field of Philosophy: An Outline of Lectures on Introduction to Philosophy”

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• God is the Absolute Idea, a circle that returns upon itself, not a straight line projected indefinitely.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Circles, Ideas, Return

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1901). “Typical Modern Conceptions of God: Or, The Absolute of German Romantic Idealism and of English Evolutionary Agnosticism, with a Constructive Essay”

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• Metaphysics is the clearing house for all fundamental philosophical problems.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Philosophical, House, Fundamentals

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1922). “Man and the Cosmos - An introduction to Metaphysics.”

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• Might does not make right, but right demands that those who hold to it should defend it with all their might.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Doe, Demand, Might

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