The Popular Philosopher
A good memory learns to forget.
As my heart waxes, my IQ wanes.
Don’t fit in. Create a spot for yourself.
Into every masterpiece falls a little filler.
P as in Paul, sir? No. P as in pterodactyl.
My theories prove the errors of my ways.
I’ve spent most of my career on sabbatical.
As long as you think like me, you’re all right.
Back when I was ignorant, I knew everything.
A little logic. — infinity : space :: eternity : time
I’m a student of life specializing in generalities.
When I’m not talking, I almost appear intelligent.
We learn as much by accident as we do by plan.
I came to philosophy by way of wonder and awe.
The meaning lies somewhere in the interpretation.
Everything is replaceable except for one of a kind.
Raison d’ être. — Everybody needs a reason to be.
Freethinking ain’t cheap. You have to pay the price.
Sophistry is espousing wisdom and not practicing it.
If you think you’re open-minded, you’re probably not.
I never leave my ivory tower except to paint the lilies.
Don’t get so busy getting that you don’t enjoy having.
New age bullshit. — We unwittingly follow our destiny.
Even the most enduring love must die a natural death.
Nothing is more impressed with my mind than my brain.
The more wit in your head, the less sweat on your brow.
The less we pretend to know, the more we seem to learn.
Assumptions are the roadblocks on the freeways to facts.
The genius of Einstein was to add a curve to Euclid’s line.
Household names don’t necessarily translate into classics.
Wise guys and smart guys are not necessarily synonymous.
We must convince ourselves before we can persuade others.
Provincial is the mind that doesn’t see beyond its own borders.
The key to learning is minimizing the I and maximizing the eye.
I’m self-taught, which alone accounts for most of my stupidity.
More like five. — College set back my education by four years.
In the game of life, universal chance trounces personal choice.
Our responsibility. — We have no choice but to accept free will.
The whole world is a university and every experience a subject.
Shiny new knowledge erodes while craggy old wisdom endures.
Another man’s ignorance is disturbing, while our own is blissful.
For us shortsighted mortals, death is the supreme event horizon.
If it weren’t for the unconscious, I don’t what would guide my life.
I’ve studied the art of living and determined it’s a lifelong process.
When applied to the individual, generalizations are usually wrong.
I never focus too much because I’m afraid I’ll miss the big picture.
Only research if you don’t find what you’re looking for the first time.
Stardust. — The stars and the moon created the first philosophers.
An argument is most convincing when dressed in a confident pose.
By the end of my liberal education, I was damn near a conservative.
It’s he with the most imagination that discovers the most new worlds.
Since becoming a skeptic, I always put “the truth” in quotation marks.
The audience remembers the short joke and forgets the long lecture.
I started out an iconoclast and ended up drowning in the mainstream.
Starstruck. — Those overcome by stars aren’t very bright themselves.
Get me, Elon. — To return to my roots, I would have to buy a spaceship.
A school of thought is little more than a well-respected pool of opinion.
Whenever I express my views, I realize the inadequacy of my thoughts.
Once we accept life’s ambiguities, we can start reveling in the nuances.
Part of being bright is asking what some might call elementary questions.
Wasted youth. — At university, I majored in bullshit with a minor in drugs.
When we speak of eternity and immortality, time cannot help but mock us.
Training vs. Education. — A good teacher draws out more than he puts in.
If I have one parting word of advice for my pupils, it’s to take the long view.
I was searching for the meaning of life in all the wrong places — bookstores.
I would rather have committed too many errors than conducted too few trials.
Education is the slow awakening of the mind from the slumbers of ignorance.
The genius persists in his folly and ends up showing us who the real fools are.
Can’t win. — I enjoy engaging in Socratic debates with everyone, but my wife.
I never take the long way around my mind when a mental shortcut is available.
Stop complaining about the homework. Start studying what interests you most.
The first rule of science. — What is true today may be proved wrong tomorrow.
When you come face-to-face with death, you’re staring the truest truth in the eye.
Formal schooling is one of the best ways to cure a child’s natural love of learning.
From a historical viewpoint, even the most far-sighted appear a little near-sighted.
It’s all relative. — The world that we see is largely dependent on how we look at it.
I’ll proudly wear the label Mystic if it means I love the mystery more than the facts.
As far as we know, man is the only animal that has to endure a crisis of meaning.
I’m not much of a mathematician, but I’m 100% positive that nothing equals infinity.
Inside and out. — I spend most of my time navel-gazing and the rest of it stargazing.
No man is more keenly aware of the paucity of his knowledge than the well-read one.
The perennial philosophy book concludes confidently with the phrase, “I don’t know.”
The best of all possible worlds. — Even in The Age of Reason, there was a lot of folly.
The headlines are so seductive that I don’t even notice her ugly friend the small print.
When we underestimate the intelligence of others, we only highlight our own stupidity.
An Aristotelian bit. — I told her I was a Peripatetic. And she said, “Yes, you are pathetic.”
I give a very popular outdoor seminar in the spring: Romantic Poetry Reading in the Buff
Second-hand knowledge. — I asked for his opinion, and he only gave me those of others.
Positions are like children. Never adopt one that you don’t have the wherewithal to support.
I’ve had a Romance period and a Renaissance. Now, I’m looking for some Enlightenment.
Old freehand. — The most practical thing I learned as an undergrad was how to roll a joint.
An autodidactic education can be quite good. Unfortunately, in my case, the teacher sucked.
The one thing I couldn’t quite get my head around is the seeming incomprehensibility of it all.
I applied for a poetic license, but the gods declared that I was only qualified for simple prose.
Movie reference. — Any idealism I acquired at college was lost when I watched The Big Chill.
Supernova. — I’m a superstar already. It’s just that my light has not reached most people yet.
You can’t always get what you want. — Obscurity dreams of fame as fame dreams of obscurity.
I know an idea is too big for me to entertain when I cannot fit it on a T-shirt. Bumperstickers sell.
The truth is a very risky business, but I dare say it’s worth the venture. You’ve got to roll the dice.
Feline hegemony. — If cleverness were the highest form of intelligence, cats would rule the world.
In a culture that worships youth, it shouldn’t be surprising that most of the adults act like children.
Biology and math class combined. — She taught me that meiosis divides and that sex multiplies.
It was obvious that he had read a lot of books, but it wasn’t so clear that he comprehended them.
I gave up the search for a grand unified theory when I realized the man upstairs was an anarchist.
Given nature’s hardware and society’s software, I’m finding it harder and harder to think for myself.
I find my way around with good old horse sense and get myself lost with intellectual mumbo jumbo.
I would have been a powerfully original thinker if my predecessors hadn’t stolen all my great ideas.
The last laugh. — History celebrates many the great inventor called crackpot by his contemporaries.
Intelligence is marked more by a desire to learn rather than the possession of any certain knowledge.
The ultimate question. — If you were by chance reborn, would you choose to come back as yourself?
I wanted to offer an introductory course in great minds, but I could never get over my own mediocrity.
When we speak of universal truths, we shouldn’t forget that it’s from the point of view of a small planet.
The best metaphor for the relationship between nature and civilization is pooping behind closed doors.
I haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m talking about, and I try to make that point perfectly clear in my writings.
The life of the mind is a very inexpensive lifestyle. In my head, especially, the rent is so damn cheap. I guess it’s not a desirable location.
I tell myself half-jokingly that books are the best investment, but my bank account frowns on such assertions.
The Pope’s monolithic frame doesn’t square with God’s pluralistic design. I’m Catholic only in my upbringing.
Tongue-tied. — The truth is always on the tip of my tongue right before it hides itself when I commence speaking.
Self-criticism. — Those most certain of what’s happening outside are usually the ones that rarely leave the house.
An American experiment. — I’m the hybrid you get when you cross Yankee ingenuity with Californian free-spiritedness.
Street smarts. — I had to spend some time at the school of hard knocks before I got into the institute of higher learning.
Revisionist history. — We are very harsh on our forefathers, but how willingly we swallow the prejudices of our own day.
Live and learn. — I never thought that experience was all that important until I had accumulated enough to know better.
The Mob. — The screams of the crowd drown out the voice of reason until it eventually resurfaces to say, “I told you so.”
Job security. — I decided to become a philosopher because wise men tend to have longer careers than pretty boys do.
One second, you’re sitting there reveling in the mystery of existence. Then the next thing you know, you’re wiping your ass.
An intellectual is a person who is incredibly skilled at making simple matters complicated and complicated matters simple.
I spent most of my youth chasing after the foggy abstract concept of self-actualization. Now, approaching middle age, I’ve finally wised up enough to kick back and enjoy the concrete creature comforts of food and shelter.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. — A man must first secure a cave before he can begin contemplating the shadows on the wall.
Typical economist. — In theorizing, it’s best to be as vague as possible, thereby greatly improving one’s chance of being right.
This woman was complaining to me that all men think about is sex. I disagreed slightly and said, “For us higher type of men, sex is only nine-tenths of existence.”
More or less. — The more that comes out of your mouth, the less that goes into your ears. This can be good or bad, depending on the quality of your interlocutor.
Heuristics. — Most of us arrive at our verdicts more by way of convenience and comfort than any substantial evidence or proof.
Can’t see the forest for the trees. — Focus is paradoxical. It allows us to see something at the expense of everything else. That’s why, when I concentrate, I do so only loosely.
It’s interesting how much our philosophy of life, or lack thereof, determines how we spend our lives. It could mean the difference between sitting behind a desk for thirty years or wandering the freeway with a knapsack tied to a stick.
An education is no more expensive than a public library card and as much free time as you can spare. It takes leisure, not necessarily money, to acquire culture.
Jesus and Socrates share some similar characteristics in modern-day folklore. It seems that both of them walked around town in hippie sandals and ragged clothing. They both advocated a life of material simplicity and questioned the virtues of gold. They both enjoyed talking, yet neither cared much for writing. They both were sentenced to death by the prevailing powers for supposedly threatening authority and corrupting young men. They both were popularized and immortalized by their disciples. They both became symbols of Western civilization and still have a relatively good following today. Finally, they both would be sad to know that their teachings are frequently preached but rarely practiced.
Only those that pick up a history book once in a while realize how much we unknowingly copy our ancestors. The news is mostly old for anybody with a smidgen of historical consciousness.
Will Durant, the prolific American historian, once said that the only thing we’ve learned from history is that we haven’t learned from it. We invariably repeat the same mistakes as our forebears because we haven’t the good sense to appreciate their experience or hear their counsel. We think ourselves different only to prove ourselves the same.
Each generation claims to be better than the next one until it finally succumbs to the same old abuses and practices of her parents.
I’m an optimist in the sense that I have great faith in man’s potential and, simultaneously, a pessimist because there are so few cases of him living up to it.