Phenomenon Quotes - Page 13

• Monotheistic religions in the West have tended to conflate having a general orientation in life, having a specific theory of the world, having a sense of the positive meaningfulness of one's existence, and having a fixed set of rules for behavior, but these elements are in principle separable. ... The "metaphysical need," ... both Marx and Nietzsche held, is a historical phenomenon that arises under determinate circumstances, and could be expected to disappear under other circumstances that we could relatively easily envisage.

  Raymond Geuss

  Historical, Principles, Needs

  "Philosophy and Real Politics". Book by Raymond Geuss, 2008.

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• North and south must also adopt measures to arrest the growing phenomenon of illegal capital flight and the repatriation of illicit wealth siphoned abroad by corrupt political leaders and their collaborators back to their countries of origin.

  Olusegun Obasanjo

  Country, Political, Leader

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• Childbearing is the most consistent of human events. Male and female alike, we have all been gestated inside a woman's body. As a phenomenon, childbearing is seemingly eternal and universal, yet like no other it highlights the gender divide, the singularity of individual experience and sociocultural diversities.

  Joan Raphael-Leff

  Diversity, Males, Events

  Joan Raphael-Leff (2000). “Spilt Milk: Perinatal Loss & Breakdown”, p.1951, Karnac Books

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• Culture is both an intellectual phenomenon and a moral one

  Matthew Arnold

  Intellectual, Culture, Moral

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• And I believe that if 100 million people became embodiments of peace, the world would transform, because consciousness is a collective phenomenon. And what we see as good and evil is the balance between forces.

  Deepak Chopra

  Believe, People, Evil

  "Deepak Chopra Traces Jesus' Untold Story". "The Hannity & Colmes Show", www.foxnews.com. November 12, 2008.

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• Mass man is a phenomenon of electric speed, not of physical quantity.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Men, Speed, Mass

  "Access", Issues 165-176, National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, (p. xxiii), 1984.

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• Male penguins are unfaithful up to an advanced age, a phenomenon sometimes attributed to the sea air.

  Will Cuppy

  Air, Sea, Age

  Will Cuppy, P. G. Wodehouse (2005). “How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes”, p.88, David R. Godine Publisher

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• The phenomenon of dreaming ... helped to build up the notion of an unreal or spiritual world; and in general, all the conditions of savage dawn-life so strongly conduced toward a feeling of the supernatural, that we need not wonder at the thoroughness with which man's very hereditary essence has become saturated with religion and superstition.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Dream, Spiritual, Men

  H. P. Lovecraft (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Illustrated)”, p.1698, Delphi Classics

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• Perhaps the most concise summary of enlightenment would be: transcending dualism . ... Dualism is the conceptual division of the world into categories ... human perception is by nature a dualistic phenomenon - which makes the quest for enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least.

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Struggle, Perception, Enlightenment

  "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid". Book by Douglas Hofstadter, 1979.

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• In our struggle to understand the history of life, we must learn where to place the boundary between contingent and unpredictable events that occur but once and the more repeatable, lawlike phenomenon that may pervade life's history as generalities.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Struggle, Events, May

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.402, Harvard University Press

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• There is but one indefectibly certain truth , and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.

  William James

  Consciousness, Certain, Standing

  William James (2000). “Pragmatism and Other Writings”, p.260, Penguin

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• Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.

  William James

  Spiritual, Children, Maturity

  Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.482, Simon and Schuster

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• Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history : the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal "honor" and court etiquette.

  Isaac Asimov

  Names, Two, Honor

  Isaac Asimov (1991). “Great Tales of the Golden Age of Science Fiction”, Bbs Publishing Corporation

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• Every phenomenon manifests itself of its own accord. This manifestation is always distinct from form, and is the essence of the immediate, the trace of the immediate.

  Yves Klein

  Essence, Form, Manifestation

  "Yves Klein, 1928 - 1962, Selected Writings" by Yves Klein, in 1961; p. 67, 1974.

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• Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. ...Innovation is bad form.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Class, Innovation, Characteristics

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.124, Courier Corporation

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• Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it's very ambiguous. You have it or you don't. You can't attain it. There are terrible forms of professional humor, the humorists' humor. That can be awful. It depresses me because it is artificial. You can't always be humorous, but a professional humorist must. That is a sad phenomenon.

  Heinrich Böll

  Depressing, Humorous, Awful

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• I can have little patience with those who oppose ... the theory of evolution or what are called "mechanistic" explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts , the conservative only weakens his own position.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Theory Of Evolution, Littles, Faces

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, 1960.

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• Unlike the position that exists in the physical sciences, in economics and other disciplines that deal with essentially complex phenomena, the aspects of the events to be accounted for about which we can get quantitative data are necessarily limited and may not include the important ones.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Data, Discipline, Important

  "New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "Philosophy ". Chapter 2: "The Pretence of Knowledge", p. 24, 1978.

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• A Christ upon paper, though it were the sacred pages of the Gospel, would have been as powerless to save Christendom as a Christ in fresco; not less feeble than the Countenance which, in the last stages of its decay, may be traced on the wall of the Refectory at Milan. A living Christ is the key to the phenomenon of Christian history.

  Henry Parry Liddon

  Christian, Wall, Keys

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• Community is another such phenomenon. Like electricity, it is profoundly lawful. Yet there remains something about it that is inherently mysterious, miraculous, unfathomable. Thus there is no adequate one-sentence definition of genuine community. Community is something more than the sum of its parts, its individual members. What is this "something more?" Even to begin to answer that, we enter a realm that is not so much abstract as almost mystical. It is a realm where words are never fully suitable and language itself falls short.

  M. Scott Peck

  Fall, Community, Answers

  M. Scott Peck (2010). “The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace”, p.60, Simon and Schuster

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• Claude Debussy was a rare phenomenon a composer profoundly and subversively revolutionary.

  Claude Debussy

  Revolutionary, Composer, Debussy

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• When I found out that Santa Claus wasn't real, I wasn't upset; rather, I was relieved that there was a much simpler phenomenon to explain how so many children all over the world got presents on the same night! The story had been getting pretty complicated -- it was getting out of hand.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Children, Real, Night

  Richard P. Feynman (2011). “"What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character”, p.26, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I believe there are two sides to the phenomenon known as death, this side where we live, and the other side where we shall continue to live. Eternity does not start ith death. We are in eternity now.

  Norman Vincent Peale

  Death, Believe, Two Sides

  Norman Vincent Peale (1987). “The power of positive thinking”, Prentice Hall

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• The outer is easier, and the outer is objective. For example, one man, Thomas Alva Edison, discovers electricity and the whole of humanity uses it; there is no need for everyone to discover it again and again. Inner growth is a totally different phenomenon. A Gautama Buddha may become enlightened, but that does not mean that everybody else becomes enlightened. Each individual has to find the truth for him or herself.

  Rajneesh

  Motivational, Mean, Men

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• Intelligence is: (a) the most complex phenomenon in the Universe; or (b) a profoundly simple process. The answer, of course, is (c) both of the above. It's another one of those great dualities that make life interesting.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Simple, Interesting, Intelligence

  Ray Kurzweil (2000). “The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence”, p.142, Penguin

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