William Porter > William's Quotes

“Minds are not bits of clockwork, they are just bits of not-clockwork. As thus represented, minds are not merely ghosts harnessed to machines, they are themselves just spectral machines. . . . Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine does just this. It maintains that there exist both bodies and minds; that there occur physical processes and mental processes; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal movements and mental causes of corporeal movements. I shall argue that these and other analogous conjunctions are absurd.”
― Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind

“A lot happens when the prince and princess live happily ever after--the king, his father, dies, so he is now ruler and she his queen, they have their children, she conducts discreet affairs with Sir Lancelot, there are border uprisings...but still the story ended when the love toward which their destinies drove them came to mutual consciousness when they knew, each knowing the other knew, that they were meant for each other.”
― Arthur C. Danto

“In my own version of the idea of 'what art wants,' the end and fulfillment of the history of art is the philosophical understanding of what art is, an understanding that is achieved in the way that understanding in each of our lives is achieved, namely, from the mistakes we make, the false paths we follow, the false images we have come to abandon until we learn wherein our limits consist, and then how to live within those limits. ”
― Arthur C. Danto, After the End of Art

“Conquer yourself rather than the world.”
― René Descartes

“The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“You shall create beauty not to excite the senses
but to give sustenance to the soul. ”
― Gabriela Mistral

“But you must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power...It must follow knowledge, and serve need.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“A rock is a good thing, too, you know. If the Isles of Earthsea were all made of diamond, we'd lead a hard life here. Enjoy the illusions, lad, and let the rocks be rocks.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“That is between me and my shadow.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“If you let conditions stop you from working, they'll always stop you.”
― James T. Farrell

“This very second has vanished forever, lost in the anonymous mass of the irrevocable. It will never return. I suffer from this, and I do not. Everything is unique—and insignificant.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“Having always lived in fear of being surprised by the worst, I have tried in every circumstance to get a head start, flinging myself into misfortune long before it occurred.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born