“When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.”
More from John le Carré on Philosophy
“... in moments of crisis our thoughts do not run consecutively but rather sweep over us in waves or intuition and experience ...”
“A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.”
“Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.”
Others on Philosophy
Ludwig Wittgenstein
22 quotes“I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”
Christopher Hitchens
22 quotes“To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?”
Nietzsche
22 quotes“Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.”
Carl Jung
21 quotes“I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time.”
Immanuel Kant
20 quotes“An action, to have moral worth, must be done from duty.”
Heraclitus
19 quotes“Nothing endures but change.”
H. L. Mencken
17 quotes“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...”
C.S. Lewis
15 quotes“For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.”
Napoleon
14 quotes“Circumstances-what are circumstances? I make circumstances.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
14 quotes“I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
Samuel Beckett
14 quotes“We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?”
Paul Valéry
13 quotes“The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.”