A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who’s wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable? I think that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It’s not as though I’m expecting a reply. I’m fully aware that Polly is a houseplant.

Osho is one of India’s greatest mystics…. I see him as one of the world’s great teachers, thinkers, philosophers and guides of our times. I have enormous respect for his world vision and the kind of International Communities he is building. I have always felt his influence in my life.

Since philosophy is a piece of human character, it merits a spot in the realm of endless facts.

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

Men, believing in myths, will always fear something terrible, everlasting punishment as certain or probable . . . Men base all these fears not on mature opinions, but on irrational fancies, that they are more disturbed by fear of the unknown than by facing facts. Peace of mind lies in being delivered from all these fears.

The noble soul occupies itself with wisdom and friendship.

It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.

I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.

A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery, imposing upon our necks an everlasting lord and tyrant, whom we are to stand in awe of night and day.

Only the just man enjoys peace of mind.

Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul.

Man was not intended by nature to live in communities and be civilized.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.

The philosopher’s school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter.

It is enough for me to hear someone talk sincerely about ideals, about the future, about philosophy, to hear him say “we” with a certain inflection of assurance, to hear him invoke “others” and regard himself as their interpreter – for me to consider him my enemy.

As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.

Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening.

As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?

Don’t become a philosopher before you become rich.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes.

A philosopher once said, ‘It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.’ Well, they don’t!

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical

Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let us leave behind all these boys’ philosophies–these over simple answers. The problem is not simple and the answer is not going to be simple either.

Philosophy of religion really amounts to philosophizing on certain favorite assumptions that are not confirmed at all

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner.

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You say some Greek philosophers could dazzle their audiences
with their riddles? That does not interest me at all. Bring
more wine instead and play your lute; your changes in tones
remind me of the wind that rushes past and disappears,
just like us.

I remember the philosopher Bertrand Russell was asked why he spent his time protesting against nuclear war and getting arrested on demonstrations. Why didn’t he continue to work on the serious philosophical and logical problems which have major intellectual significance? And his answer was pretty good. He said: “Look, if I and others like me only work on those problems, there won’t be anybody around to appreciate it or be interested.

Philosophy begins with wonder

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

Aristotle, in spite of his reputation, is full of absurdities. He says that children should be conceived in the Winter, when the wind is in the North, and that if people marry too young the children will be female. He tells us that the blood of females is blacker then that of males; that the pig is the only animal liable to measles; that an elephant suffering from insomnia should have its shoulders rubbed with salt, olive-oil, and warm water; that women have fewer teeth than men, and so on. Nevertheless, he is considered by the great majority of philosophers a paragon of wisdom.

An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress—though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

The options available to a creative person are ever limited by the choices offered by a philosopher.

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.