Feline Philosophy Quotes

“Killing and dying for nonsensical ideas is how many human beings have made sense of their lives.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“When people say their goal in life is to be happy they are telling you they are miserable.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“All these philosophies(Stoicism,Epicureanism, Pyrrhonism)have a common failing.
They imagine life can be ordered by human reason.
Either the Mind can devise a way of life that is secure from loss ,or else it can control the emotions so that it can withstand any loss. In fact ,neither how we live nor the emotions we feel can be controlled in this way.
Our lives are shaped by chance and our emotions by the body.Much of human life -and much of philosophy - is an attempt to divert ourselves from this fact.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Humans need something other than the human world, or else they go mad.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Instead of being a sign of their inferiority, the lack of abstract thinking among cats is a mark of their freedom of mind. Thinking in generalities slides easily into a superstitious faith in language. Much of the history of philosophy consists of the worship of linguistic fictions. Relying on what they can touch, smell and see, cats are not ruled by words.
Philosophy testifies to the frailty of the human mind. Humans philosophize for the same reason they pray. They know the meaning they have fashioned in their lives is fragile and live in dread of its breaking down. Death is the ultimate breakdown in meaning, since it marks the end of any story they have told themselves.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Humans cannot become cats. Yet if they set aside any notion of being superior beings, they may come to understand how cats can thrive without anxiously inquiring how to live. Cats have no need of philosophy. Obeying their nature, they are content with the life it gives them. In humans, on the other hand, discontent with their nature seems to be natural. With predictably tragic and farcical results, the human animal never ceases striving to be something that it is not.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“The source of philosophy is anxiety, and cats do not suffer from anxiety unless they are threatened or find themselves in a strange place. For humans, the world itself is a threatening and strange place. Religions are attempts to make an inhuman universe humanly habitable. Philosophers have often dismissed these faiths as being far beneath their own metaphysical speculations, but religion and philosophy serve the same need.1 Both try to fend off the abiding disquiet that goes with being human.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“A philosopher once assured me he had persuaded his cat to become a vegan. Believing he was joking, I asked how he had achieved this feat. Had he supplied the cat with mouse-flavoured vegan titbits? Had he introduced his cat to other cats, already practising vegans, as feline role models? Or had he argued with the cat and persuaded it that eating meat is wrong? My interlocutor was not amused. I realized he actually believed the cat had opted for a meat-free diet. So I ended our exchange with a question: did the cat go out? It did, he told me. That solved the mystery. Plainly, the cat was feeding itself by visiting other homes and hunting. If it brought any carcasses home – a practice to which ethically undeveloped cats are sadly all too prone – the virtuous philosopher had managed not to notice them.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Morality has many charms. What could be more captivating than a vision of everlasting justice? Yet visions of justice are as immutable as styles in shoes. What morality demands shifts across the generations and may change more than once within a single human lifetime. Not so long ago morality required spreading civilization by extending imperial power. Today, morality condemns empire in all its forms. These judgements are irreconcilably opposed. But they provide the same satisfaction to those who pronounce them – a gratifying sense of virtue.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“You can be in paradise only when you do not know what it is like to be in paradise. As soon as you know, paradise is gone. No effort of thought can take you back, for thought – the conscious awareness of yourself as a mortal being – is the Fall. In the Garden of Eden, the primordial human pair are clothed in ignorance of themselves. When they come to self-awareness, they find they are naked. Thinking of yourself is the gift of the serpent that cannot be returned.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Much of the history of philosophy consists of the worship of linguistic fictions. Relying on what they can touch, smell and see, cats are not ruled by words.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“1 Never try to persuade human beings to be reasonable Trying to persuade human beings to be rational is like trying to teach cats to be vegans. Human beings use reason to bolster whatever they want to believe, seldom to find out if what they believe is true. This may be unfortunate, but there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it. If human unreason frustrates or endangers you, walk away.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“At bottom, hatred of cats may be an expression of envy. Many human beings lead lives of muffled misery. Torturing other creatures is a relief, since it inflicts worse suffering on them. Tormenting cats is particularly satisfying, since they are so satisfied in themselves. Cat-hatred is very often the self-hatred of misery-sodden human beings redirected against creatures they know are not unhappy.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Cats have no need of philosophy. Obeying their nature, they are content with the life it gives them. In humans, on the other hand, discontent with their nature seems to be natural. With predictably tragic and farcical results, the human animal never ceases striving to be something that it is not. Cats make no such effort. Much of human life is a struggle for happiness. Among cats, on the other hand, happiness is the state to which they default when practical threats to their well-being are removed. That may be the chief reason many of us love cats. They possess as their birthright a felicity humans regularly fail to attain.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“5 Forget about pursuing happiness, and you may find it”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Do not become attached to your suffering, and avoid those who do.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“2 It is foolish to complain that you do not have enough time”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Another scholar who recognized an affinity between Spinozist and Taoist ethics was the Norwegian Jon Wetlesen. In The Sage and the Way: Spinoza’s Ethics of Freedom, Wetlesen writes that Taoism ‘does not aim at becoming what one is not, but in being what one is.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“More plausibly, a subjective view of ethics is a result of the hollowing out of religion. Expressed in universal laws or commands, ‘morality’ is a relic of monotheism. If there is no author of these edicts, what authority can they have? In religion, the author was God. Later, with the rise of the Enlightenment, it came to be ‘humanity’. But humankind cannot be the author of anything, since there is no such thing as a universal human agent. All that exists is the multitudinous human animal, with its many different moralities.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Whereas cats live by following their nature, humans live by suppressing theirs.”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“1 Never try to persuade human beings to be reasonable”
― John N. Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“È meglio essere indifferenti agli altri che convincersi di doverli amare per forza.”
― John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“[...] la propria buona vita è qualcosa che i singoli devono trovare, non possono sceglierla. Non siamo noi a determinare le nostre esperienze, nemmeno quando derivano da decisioni che crediamo di aver preso. La buona vita non è quella che vuoi, ma quella che ti realizza.”
― john gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Le storie che si sono cuciti addosso prendono il sopravvento, costringendoli a trascorrere i giorni nel tentativo di diventare i personaggi che hanno inventato. La vita non è loro, ma di una figura evocata nell'immaginazione.”
― John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“L'oblio offerto dalla fine dell'esistenza è uno dei privilegi della condizione umana.”
― John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“[...] la fuga degli esseri umani dalla morte è stata la forza trainante della civiltà. La paura di morire è anche all'origine dell'io, una barriera che l'uomo erige per ripararsi dall'impotente consapevolezza di essere solo di passaggio, destinato a svanire,”
― John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Anche la gelosia più intensa e la delusione più amara forniscono una tregua temporanea alla vacuità. L'amore erige una barriera alla conoscenza e alla comprensione, di sé e degli altri, donando agli uomini sollievo dall'essere ciò che sono.”
― John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Gli uomini si formano un'immagine di se stessi durante l'infanzia e la fanciullezza, poi cercano la felicità preservando e rafforzando quell'immagine che loro stessi hanno creato. Ma essa non è la realtà dei loro corpi e delle loro vite, e inseguirla non conduce all'appagamento bensì alla frustrazione.”
― John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“La crudeltà è infatti empatia in forma negativa: se non si ha la capacità di percepire la sofferenza altrui non si può trarre piacere dal loro dolore.”
― John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

“Vivere bene non significa essere sempre più consci, significa essere se stessi.”
― John Gray, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life