Philosophy

"I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not, in my view, be the object of any statutory restrictions. I know, only too well, what it would entail. Hermeneutic speakeasies would spring up all over the place, smuggled Thick Descriptions would be brought in by the lorry-load from Canada by the Mafia, blood and thick meaning would clot in the gutter as rival gangs of semiotic bootleggers slugged it out in a series of bloody shoot-outs and ambushes. Addicts would be subject to blackmail. Consumption of deep meanings and its attendant psychic consequences would in no way diminsh, but the criminal world would benefit, and the whole fabric of civil society would be put under severe strain. Never!"

"As subjects, we are what the shape of the world produced by signs makes us become. Perhaps we are, somewhere, the deep impulse which generates semiosis. And yet we recognize ourselves only as semiosis in progress, signifying systems and communicational processes. The map of semiosis, as defined at a given stage of historical development (with the debris carried over from previous semiosis), tells us who we are and what (or how) we think."

"When semiotics posits such concepts as 'sign', it does not act like a science; it acts like philosophy when it posits such abstractions as subject, good and evil, truth or revolution. Now, a philosophy is not a science, because its assertions cannot be empirically tested … Philosophical entities exist only insofar as they have been philosophically posited. Outside their philosophical framework, the empirical data that a philosophy organizes lose every possible unity and cohesion. To walk, to make love, to sleep, to refrain from doing something, to give food to someone else, to eat roast beef on Friday — each is either a physical event or the absence of a physical event, or a relation between two or more physical events. However, each becomes an instance of good, bad, or neutral behavior within a given philosophical framework. Outside such a framework, to eat roast beef is radically different from making love, and making love is always the same sort of activity independent of the legal status of the partners. From a given philosophical point of view, both to eat roast beef on Friday and to make love to x can become instances of 'sin', whereas both to give food to someone and to make love to у can become instances of virtuous action. Good or bad are theoretical stipulations according to which, by a philosophical decision, many scattered instances of the most different facts or acts become the same thing. It is interesting to remark that also the notions of 'object', 'phenomenon', or 'natural kind', as used by the natural sciences, share the same philosophical nature. This is certainly not the case of specific semiotics or of a human science such as cultural anthropology."

"The principle of interpretation says that "a sign is something by knowing which we know something more" ( Peirce). The Peircean idea of semiosis is the idea of an infinite process of interpretation. It seems that the symbolic mode is the paramount example of this possibility."

"The sign is usually considered as a correlation between a signifier and a signified (or between expression and content) and therefore as an action between pairs. Semiosis is, according to Peirce, "an action, or influence, which is, or involves, an operation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into an action between pairs"."

"Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all."

"A symbol is always in general and, however precise its translation, an artist can restore to it only its movement: there is no word-for-word rendering. Moreover, nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing."

"Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them"

"Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures"

"Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning"

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

"Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable."

"That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next."

"The poet's aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory."

"Standing in this presence, mindful of the solemnity of this occasion, feeling the emotions which no one may know until he senses the great weight of responsibility for himself, I must utter my belief in the divine inspiration of the founding fathers."

"Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late."

"Ask counsel of both times—of the ancient time what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest."

"[The argument of Alcidamas:] Everyone honours the wise. Thus the Parians have honoured Archilochus, in spite of his bitter tongue; the Chians Homer, though he was not their countryman; the Mytilenaeans Sappho, though she was a woman; the Lacedaemonians actually made Chilon a member of their senate, though they are the least literary of men; the inhabitants of Lampsacus gave public burial to Anaxagoras, though he was an alien, and honour him even to this day."

"Drop, drop—in our sleep, upon the heart sorrow falls, memory's pain, and to us, though against our very will, even in our own despite, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God."

"The question is, whether, like the Divine Child in the Temple, we are turning knowledge into wisdom, and whether, understanding more of the mysteries of life, we are feeling more of its sacred law; and whether, having left behind the priests and the scribes and the doctors and the fathers, we are about our Father's business, and becoming wise to God."

"For knowledge to become wisdom, and for the soul to grow, the soul must be rooted in God: and it is through prayer that there comes to us that which is the strength of our strength, and the virtue of our virtue, the Holy Spirit."

"What in me is dark, Illumine, what is low, raise and support."

"The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity."

"And he is oft the wisest man Who is not wise at all."

"Wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age."

"Wisdom sits alone, Topmost in heaven:—she is its light—its God; And in the heart of man she sits as high— Though grovelling eyes forget her oftentimes, Seeing but this world's idols. The pure mind Sees her forever: and in youth we come Fill'd with her sainted ravishment, and kneel, Worshipping God through her sweet altar fires, And then is knowledge "good.""

"Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim Wisdom the source of virtue, and of fame, Obtained with labour, for mankind employed, And then, when most you share it, best enjoyed."

"The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."

"Isthuc est sapere non quod ante pedes modo est Videre sed etiam illa, quæ futura sunt Prospicere."

"The Prophet's words were true; The mouth of Ali is the golden door Of Wisdom." When his friends to Ali bore These words, he smiled and said: "And should they ask The same until my dying day, the task Were easy; for the stream from Wisdom's well, Which God supplies, is inexhaustible."

"By Wisdom wealth is won; But riches purchased wisdom yet for none."

"The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance."

"Happy those Who in the after-days shall live, when Time Hath spoken, and the multitude of years Taught wisdom to mankind!"

"A short saying oft contains much wisdom."

"As for me, all I know is that I know nothing."

"Melius in malis sapimus, secunda rectum auferunt."

"Nulli sapere casu obtigit."

"Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life—in a firmness of mind and mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do, as well as to talk; and to make our actions and words all of a color."

"The Italian seemes wise, and is wise; the Spaniard seemes wise, and is a foole; the French seemes a foole, and is wise; and the English seemes a foole and is a foole."

"Wouldst thou wisely, and with pleasure, Pass the days of life's short measure, From the slow one counsel take, But a tool of him ne'er make; Ne'er as friend the swift one know, Nor the constant one as foe."

"The power is yours, but not the sight; You see not upon what you tread; You have the ages for your guide, But not the wisdom to be led."

"Ce n'est pas être sage D'être plus sage qu'il ne le faut."

"Be wisely worldly, but not worldly wise."

"Those who seek me diligently find me."

"Get wisdom, because it is better than gold: and purchase prudence, for it is more precious than silver."

"Wisdom is better than rubies."

"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding."

"Wisdom crieth without; she uttereth her voice in the street."

"Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit."

"Nemo solus satis sapit."