The Catholic solution of our problem, of our unique vital problem, the problem of the immortality and eternal salvation of the soul, satisfies the will, and therefore satisfies life; but the attempt to rationalize it by means of a dogmatic theology fails to satisfy the reason. And reason has its exigencies as imperious as those of life. It is no use seeking to force ourselves to consider as super-rational what clearly appears to us to be contra-rational... Infallibility, a notion of Hellenic origin, is in its essence a rationalistic category.
Miguel de Unamuno
» Miguel de Unamuno - all quotes »
Yes perhaps, as the Sage says, "nothing worthy of proving can be proven, nor yet disproven"; but can we restrain that instinct which urges man to wish to know, and above all to wish to know the things which conduce to life, to eternal life? Eternal life, not eternal knowledge as the Alexandrian gnostic said. For living is one thing and knowing is another; and... perhaps there is an opposition between the two that we may say that everything vital is anti-rational, not merely irrational, and that everything rational is anti-vital. And this is the basis of the tragic sense of life.
Miguel de Unamuno
First, we must consider what soul is. It is, then, that by which the animate differs from the inanimate. The difference lies in motion, sensation, imagination, intelligence. Soul therefore, when irrational, is the life of sense and imagination; when rational, it is the life which controls sense and imagination and uses reason. The irrational soul depends on the affections of the body; it feels desire and anger irrationally. The rational soul both, with the help of reason, despises the body, and, fighting against the irrational soul, produces either virtue or vice, according as it is victorious or defeated.
Sallustius (or Sallust)
This conviction of the solvability of every mathematical problem is a powerful incentive to the worker. We hear within us the perpetual call: There is the problem. Seek its solution. You can find it by pure reason, for in mathematics there is no ignorabimus.
David Hilbert
The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future. There are only two ways of approaching this problem on the assumption that it is a genuine problem, and it is easy to see that neither of them can lead to its solution.
Alfred Jules Ayer
First, we must be very clear that you and the speaker are treating life not as a problem but as a tremendous movement. If your brain is trained to solve problems, then you will treat this movement as a problem to be solved. Is it possible to look at life with all its questions, with all its issues, which is tremendously complex, to look at it not as a problem, but to observe it clearly, without bias, without coming to some conclusion which will then dictate your observation? You have to observe this vast movement of life, not only your own particular life, but the life of all humanity, the life of the earth, the life of the trees, the life of the whole world — look at it, observe it, move with it, but if you treat it as a problem, then you will create more problems.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Unamuno, Miguel de
Underwood, Carrie
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z