University President: "Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now the Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers . . . and the Department of Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers."

But reason has also discerned that all previous cultures were founded by and on gods or belief in gods. Only if the new regimes are enormous successes, able to rival the creative genius and splendor of other cultures, could reason's rational foundings be equal or superior to the kinds of foundings that reason knows were made elsewhere. But such equality or superiority is highly questionable; therefore reason recognizes its own inadequacy. There must be religion, and reason cannot found religions.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

At the intellectual foundation of the Enlightenment project are certain epistemological assumptions. Specifically, the modern mind assumes that knowledge is certain, objective, and good. Moreover, moderns assume that, in principle, knowledge is accessible to the human mind.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.

Human behavior, suggested Greg Carey, a psychology professor at the University of Colorado, could be compared to lemonade. It's a mixture of water, lemon and sugar, and it's meaningless to ask which is most important. "Nature vs. nurture should have died a long time ago," he said.

Any contrasting of heredity with environment which presents one as more important than the other is completely meaningless. What we are depends 100 per cent on our heredity and also 100 per cent on our environment; change either and we are changed. Any attempt to make one more important than the other is as silly as trying to determine which is the more important in deriving a product, the multiplicand or the multiplier.

Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.

If a poet or an artist puts himself into his Productions he is criticized. But that is exactly what God does, he does so in Christ. And precisely that is Christianity. The creation was really only completed when God included himself in it. Before the coming of Christ, God was certainly in the creation, but as an invisible sign, like the watermark in paper. But the creation was completed by the Incarnation because God thereby included himself in it. In essence, God moved from being the watermark to being the letterhead.

Capitalism - He who dies with the most toys, wins. Judaism - He who buys toys at the lowest price, wins. Catholicism - He who denies himself the most toys, wins. Anglican - They were our toys first. Greek Orthodox - No, they were OURS first. Branch Davidians - He who dies playing with the biggest toys, wins. Atheism - There is no toy maker. Polytheism - There are many toy makers. Evolutionism - The toys made themselves. Church of Christ, Scientist - We are the toys. Communism - Everyone gets the same number of toys, and you go straight to the opposite of heaven if we catch you selling yours. Baha'i - All toys are just fine with us. Amish - Toys with batteries are surely a sin. Taoism - The doll is as important as the dump truck. Mormonism - Every boy may have as many toys as he wants. Voodoo - Let me borrow that doll for a second... Hedonism - Hang the rule book! Let's play! 7th Day Adventist - He who plays with his toys on Saturday, loses. Church of Christ - He whose toys make music, loses. Baptist - Once played always played. Jehovah's Witnesses - He who "places" the most toys door-to-door, wins. Pentecostalism - He whose toys can talk, wins. Existentialism - Toys are a figment of your imagination. Confucianism - Once a toy is dipped in water, it is no longer dry. Non-denominationalism - We don't care where the toys came from, let's just play.

An eccentric philosophy professor gave a one question final exam after a semester dealing with a broad array of topics. The class was already seated and ready to go when the professor picked up his chair, plopped it on his desk and wrote on the board: "Using everything we have learned this semester, prove that this chair does not exist." Fingers flew, erasers erased, notebooks were filled in furious fashion. Some students wrote over 30 pages in one hour attempting to refute the existence of the chair. One member of the class however, was up and finished in less than a minute. Weeks later when the grades were posted, the rest of the group wondered how he could have gotten an A when he had barely written anything at all. His answer consisted of two words: "What chair?"

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. -- John Gardner, Excellence, (New York: Harper and Row, 1971)

"I have at least this in common with Hegel: you have not read either of us."

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. -- Socrates

Question to Robert Frost: What is your greatest, most profound thought? Robert Frost: Life goes on.

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there. -- Sydney J. Harris

What do they call a comedian who doesn't get any laughs? A philosopher. -- Phil Proctor

If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.

Philosophies need to be tested. <img src="http://glenandpaula.com/quotes/uploads/1112209813off-campus-15.jpg" width="800" height="319" />

Folkpsychology, as Atran and his colleagues see it, is essential to getting along in the contemporary world, just as it has been since prehistoric times. It allows us to anticipate the actions of others and to lead others to believe what we want them to believe; it is at the heart of everything from marriage to office politics to poker. People without this trait, like those with severe autism, are impaired, unable to imagine themselves in other people’s heads. The process begins with positing the existence of minds, our own and others’, that we cannot see or feel. This leaves us open, almost instinctively, to belief in the separation of the body (the visible) and the mind (the invisible). If you can posit minds in other people that you cannot verify empirically, suggests Paul Bloom, a psychologist and the author of “Descartes’ Baby,” published in 2004, it is a short step to positing minds that do not have to be anchored to a body. And from there, he said, it is another short step to positing an immaterial soul and a transcendent God.