He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears

The unconditional
necessity

which we need so indispensably as the ultimate sustainer of all things, is for human reason the true abyss. Even eternity—however aw¬ful the sublimity with which a Haller might portray it—does not make such a dizzy¬ing impression on the mind; for eternity sustain that duration. One cannot resist the thought of it, but one also cannot bear it that a being that we represent to ourselves as the highest among all possible beings might as it were, say to itself: "If I am from eternity to eternity, outside me is nothing except what is something merely through my will; but whence then am I? " Here everything gives way beneath us, and the greatest perfection as well the smallest, hovers without support before speculative reason, for which it would cost nothing to let the one as much as the other disappear without the least obstacle."
— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A613/B641
"There's no talent here, this is hard work. > This is an obsession. Talent does not exist, we are all equals as human beings. You could be anyone if you put in the time. You will reach the top, and that's that. I am not talented. I am obsessed."
― Conor McGregor, Notorious

Inferior to swans in prophecy

by Socrates, from Plato's Phaedo

"You seem to think me inferior to the swans in prophecy. They sing before too, but when they realize that they must die they sing most and most beautifully, as they rejoice that they are about to depart to join the god whose servants they are. But men, because of their own fear of death, tell lies about the swans and say that they lament their death and sing in sorrow. They do not reﬂect that no bird sings when it is hungry or cold or suffers in any other way, neither the nightingale nor the swallow nor the hoopoe, though they do say that these sing laments when in pain. Nor do the swans, but I believe that as they belong to Apollo, they are prophetic, have knowledge of the future and sing of the blessings of the underworld, sing and rejoice on that day beyond what they did before. As I believe myself to be a fellow servant with the swans and dedicated to the same god, and have received from my master a gift of prophecy not inferior to theirs, I am no more despondent than they on leaving life." — Socrates, from Plato's Phaedo

Consequentialism is not an ethical theory

because it fails to address the subject

"To take up a quantum in the imagination intuitively, in order to be able to use it as a measure or a unit for the estimation of magnitude by means of numbers, involves two actions of this faculty: apprehension (apprehensio) and comprehension (comprehensio aesthetica). There is no difﬁculty with apprehension, because it can go on to inﬁnity; but comprehension becomes ever more difﬁcult the further apprehension advances, and soon reaches its maximum, namely the aesthetically greatest basic measure for the estimation of magnitude. For when apprehension has gone so far that the partial representations of the intuition of the senses that were apprehended ﬁrst already begin to fade in the imagination as the latter proceeds on to the apprehension of further ones, then it loses on one side as much as it gains on the other, and there is in the comprehension a greatest point beyond which it cannot go." — Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment

"People are obsessed with what they don't allow themselves to have, and then they become controlled by it. Forbidden fruit is everyone's main meal." ― Madeleine Ryan, A Room Called Earth

"I find that at all times not merely the philosopher but even the common understanding has presupposed this persistence as a substratum of all change in the appearances, and has also always accepted it as indubitable, only the philosopher expresses himself somewhat more determinately in saying that in all alterations in the world the substance remains and only the accidents change… A philosopher was asked: How much does the smoke weigh? He replied: If you take away from the weight of the wood that was burnt the weight of the ashes that are left over, you will have the weight of the smoke. He thus assumed as incontrovertible that even in fire the matter (substance) never disappears but rather only suffers an alteration in its form. Whence does he know this? Not from experience." — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

"The location of the body in the world is determined only by outer sense; now since the soul is an object of inner sense, but no location can be determined by inner sense: the location of the soul in the body also cannot be determined, for no outer relation can be determined by inner actions. But the soul intuits itself only through inner sense: thus it cannot intuit itself in a location and be conscious of a location. I cannot feel the place in the body where the soul resides, for otherwise I would have to intuit myself through an outer sense; but I intuit myself through inner sense. As little as an eye can intuit itself, just as little can the soul intuit itself externally." — Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Metaphysics

location of the body

determined only by outer sense

"The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. Under 'things in the broadest possible sense' I include such radically different items as not only 'cabbages and kings', but numbers and duties, possibilities and finger snaps, aesthetic experience and death. To achieve success in philosophy would be, to use a contemporary turn of phrase, to 'know one's way around' with respect to all these things, not in that unreflective way in which the centipede of the story knew its way around before it faced the question, 'how do I walk?', but in that reflective way which means that no intellectual holds are barred." — Wilfrid Sellars, "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man"

"I'm not sure why I find it beautiful to devote oneself obsessively to the creation of something that doesn't matter, but I do." ― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed

"People who view actions merely as useful are not thinking of them, or valuing them, as actions at all. (On this view, we might say that consequentialism is not an ethical theory because it fails to address the subject, which is the goodness of action as such, not as a form of production.) So the capacity to choose is a capacity to make a reﬂective judgment about the value of an action as such and to be moved by that judgment to perform or avoid the action. Importantly, this is at the same time a form of self-command, a capacity to give shape to our own characters and identities. When the agent asks whether the action is a good one she is also asking: do I wish to be a person who is so moved, a person who does that sort of act for that sort of end? To relinquish this prerogative of self-command for the sake of some mere experience or gratiﬁcation is in Kant's language heteronomous and in Aristotle's base. To exercise it, especially under circumstances that make it difﬁcult, is to act from duty and so to display that special form of moral worth that Aristotle calls nobility." — Christine Korsgaard, "From Duty and for the Sake of the Noble"

"…we can 'hear ourselves think', but the verbal imagery which enables us to do this is no more the thinking itself than is the overt verbal behaviour by which it is expressed and communicated to others. It is a mistake to suppose that we must be having verbal imagery—indeed, any imagery—when we 'know what we are thinking'—in short, to suppose that 'privileged access' must be construed on a perceptual or quasi-perceptual model." — Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind

Inﬁnite, however, is absolutely

(not merely comparatively) great

"The inﬁnite, however, is absolutely (not merely comparatively) great. Compared with this, everything else (of the same kind of magnitude) is small. But what is most important is that even being able to think of it as a whole indicates a faculty of the mind which surpasses every standard of sense. For this would require a comprehension that yielded as a measure a unit that has a determinate relation to the inﬁnite, expressible in numbers, which is impossible. But even to be able to think the given inﬁnite without contradiction requires a faculty in the human mind that is itself supersensible. For it is only by means of this and its idea of a noumenon, which itself admits of no intuition though it is presupposed as the substratum of the intuition of the world as mere appearance, that the inﬁnite of the sensible world is completely comprehended in the pure intellectual estimation of magnitude under a concept, even though it can never be completely thought in the mathematical estimation of magnitude through numerical concepts. Even a faculty for being able to think the inﬁnite of supersensible intuition as given (in its intelligible substratum) surpasses any standard of sensibility, and is great beyond all comparison even with the faculty of mathematical estimation, not, of course, from a theoretical point of view, in behalf of the faculty of cognition, but still as an enlargement of the mind which feels itself empowered to overstep the limits of sensibility from another (practical) point of view. Nature is thus sublime in those of its appearances the intuition of which brings with them the idea of its inﬁnity." — Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment

Nothing is more tedious

than to talk with persons who treat your most obvious remarks as startling paradoxes

"Nothing is more tedious than to talk with persons who treat your most obvious remarks as startling paradoxes and Edward suffered likewise from that passion for argument which is the bad talkers' substitution for conversation. People who cannot talk are always proud of their dialectic. They want to modify your tritest observations and even if you suggest the day is fine, insist on arguing it out." ― W. Somerset Maugham, Mrs Craddock

"Hypocritical paradoxes arise within an individual in proportion to their growing status or fame." ― Stewart Stafford

Penchant for paradox

The unconditional
necessity

Obsession

Penchant for paradox

The unconditional necessity

Obsession

The unconditional
necessity