Confucianism strongly condemned the use of drugs like opium.
I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magick of numbers.
Since the time of the ancient Greeks, we have always felt that there was a close relationship between a strong, vital mind and physical fitness.
Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.
The ancient Greeks, as Plato reports, believed that we discover truth through "reminiscence," that is by "remembering," by intuitively searching into our own experience.
I guess you could say Alexander the Great was a man who completely transported me and moved me and inspired me because of his idealism, and I'd go back to the Greeks, and I always liked Homer and all the philosophers and their way of thinking and their concept of honor. I think their concept of honor does apply to the modern age, and certain people that walk around are pre-Christian.
It is true, indeed, that the account Plato gives in 'Timaeus' is different from what he says in his so-called 'unwritten teachings.'
I sensed that Confucius is an interesting character. This is someone who lived over 2,500 years ago and is still speaking to us. That people are still reading and repeating what he said so long ago is something I find quite fascinating.
The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.
The first guy who came up with the concept of religion was sitting out under a tree. I'm sure of that.
While most of those who hold that the whole heaven is finite say that the earth lies at the center, the philosophers of Italy, the so-called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary. They say that in the middle there is fire, and that the earth is one of the stars, and by its circular motion round the center produces night and day
The Greeks saw everything in forms which we are trying to ascertain as law, and classify as cause.
The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for wisdom, and this means a short roll call of names; Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epicurus, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.
Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom.
But Aristotle's philosophy was the intellect's Declaration of Independence.
What many people today assume Christianity to be is basically Plutarch plus Jesus.
Lucretius was passionate, and much more in need of exhortations to prudence than Epicurus was. He committed suicide, and appears to have suffered from periodic insanity - brought on, so some averred, by the pains of love or the unintended effects of a love philtre.
PYRRHONISM- An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that.
But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.
At first sight nothing seems more obvious than that everything has a beginning and an end, and that everything can be subdivided into smaller parts. Nevertheless, for entirely speculative reasons the philosophers of Antiquity, especially the Stoics, concluded this concept to be quite unnecessary. The prodigious development of physics has now reached the same conclusion as those philosophers, Empedocles and Democritus in particular, who lived around 500 B.C.E. and for whom even ancient man had a lively admiration.
Duty is for Kant the One and All. Out of the duty of gratitude, he claims, one has to defend and esteem the ancients; and only out of duty has he become a great man.
Daoist thought is the root of science and technology in China.
Cynicism was a school in Greece - the Cynics. Diogenes is a famous Cynic. There was a strong belief in nihilism and narcissism. Those are old schools too.
Since ancient times, philosophers have maintained that to strive too hard for one's own happiness is self-defeating.
The code of Manu differs from the bible. By means of it the nobles, the philosophers, and the warriors keep the whip hand over the majority. It is full of noble valuations; it shows a feeling of perfection, an acceptance of life, and triumphant feeling toward self and life.
