Quotes from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“عندما انتزع نفسي من نفسي من اجل فهم الغير ، وعندما أوسع حقل تجاربي ، فإني اتفرد بما أنني أتجاوز ماهو خاص في وضعي الأصلي من أجل التوصل إما للعالمية أو على الأقل ، لمراعاة إمكانيات الإنسانية جمعاء”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“لو كنا خيّرين تقائياً وموجّهين طبيعياً نحو الخير لما كانت هناك حاجة لوصايا زجرية. لا بل نحن بعيدون كل البعد عن ذلك كما تلاحظ دون شك... إنما وفي أغلب الأوقات, نحن لا نجد صعوبة في معرفة مايجب القيام به من أجل العمل الصالح, لكننا لا نتوقف عن السماح لأنفسنا ببعض الاستثناءات, وذلك لأننا وبكل بساطة نفضل أنفسنا على الآخرين! لهذا السبب يدعونا الواجب الملزم للمزيد من "الضغط على الذات" ولبذل الجهود من أجل الاستمرار في التقدم والتحسن”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“عندما انتزع نفسي من نفسي من اجل فهم الغير ، وعندما أوسع حقل تجاربي ، فإني اتفرد بما أنني أتجاوز ماهو خاص في وضعي الأصلي من أجل التوصل إما للعالمية أو على الأقل ، لمراعاة إمكانيات الإنسانية جمعاء”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“اللزوم البرهاني ((وضع النفس فى موضع الآخرين من أجل فهم أفضل لوجهة نظرهم))”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Greek philosophers looked upon the past and the future as the primary evils weighing upon human life, and as the source of all the anxieties which blight the present. The present moment is the only dimension of existence worth inhabiting, because it is the only one available to us. The past is no longer and the future has yet to come, they liked to remind us; yet we live virtually all of our lives somewhere between memories and aspirations, nostalgia and expectation. We imagine we would be much happier with new shoes, a faster computer, a bigger house, more exotic holidays, different friends … But by regretting the past or guessing the future, we end up missing the only life worth living: the one which proceeds from the here and now and deserves to be savoured.”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“إننا بحاجة للآخرين لكي نفهم أنفسنا, وبحاجة إلى حريتهم وإلى سعادتهم إذا أمكن ذلك, لإتمام حياتنا الخاصة”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“هل يتبادر إلى ذهنك بأن مبدأ كل مشاكل الإنسان, ومبدأ الانحطاط والجبن, هو الخوف من الموت؟ درّب نفسك لمقاومته ولتنزع كل كلماتك وكل دراساتك وكل قراءاتك إلى ذلك وستدرك أن هذا هو السبيل الوحيد لأبناء البشر لكي يصبحوا أحراراً"
-أبيكتات”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“The problem, however, is that I have yet to meet anyone, materialist or otherwise, who was able to dispense with value judgements. On the contrary, the literature of materialism is peculiarly marked by its wholesale profusion of denunciations of all sorts. Starting with Marx and Nietzsche, materialists have never been able to refrain from passing continuous moral judgement on all and sundry, which their whole philosophy might be expected to discourage them from doing.”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“يلزمنا فعلاً أن نبتعد عن الواقع للحكم بصحته أو بسوئه , كما يجب اتخاذ مسافة بالنسبة لانتماءاتنا الطبيعية أو التاريخية لكي نكتسب مايسمى عادة "الفكر الناقد" الذي بدونه لا يمكن إطلاق أي حكم قيمي”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“لو كنا خيّرين تقائياً وموجّهين طبيعياً نحو الخير م كانت هناك حاجة لوصايا زجرية. لا بل نحن بعيدون ك البعد عن ذلك كم تلاحظ دون شك... إنما وفي أغلب الأوقات, نحن لا نجد صعوبة في معرفة مايجب القيام به من أجل العمل الصالح, لكننا لا نتوقف عن السماح لأنفسنا ببعض الاستثناءات, وذلك لأننا وبكل بساطة نفضّل أنفسنا على الآخرين! لهذا السبب يدعونا الواجب الملزم للمزيد من "الضغط على الذات" ولبذل الجهود من أجل الاستمرار في التقدم والتحسن”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“The present moment is the only dimension of existence worth inhabiting, because it is the only one available to us. (...)
Yet we live virtually all of our lives somewhere between memories, and aspirations, nostalgia and expectations.”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“True knowledge is not to be had solely through a combat against error, bad faith and untruth, but more generally, through a combat against the illusions inherent in the sensible world.”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“Aprender a viver, aprender a não mais temer em vão as diferentes faces da morte, ou, simplesmente, a superar a banalidade da vida cotidiana, o tédio, o tempo que passa, já era o principal objetivo das escolas da Antiguidade grega. A mensagem delas merece ser ouvida, pois, diferentemente do que acontece na história das ciências, as filosofias do passado ainda nos falam. Eis um ponto importante que por si só merece reflexão. Quando”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“In the technological world...it is no longer a question of dominating nature or society in order to be more free or more happy, but of mastery for mastery's sake, of domination for the sake of domination. Why? For no end, precisely, or rather: because it is quite simply impossible to do otherwise, given the nature of societies entirely governed by competition, by the absolute imperative to 'advance or perish'.”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“The world is a chaos, an irreducible plurality of forces, instincts and drives which ceaselessly clash.”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

“I will say that the cross of materialism is that it never quite succeeds in believing what it preaches, in thinking its own thought. This may sound complicated, but is in fact simple: the materialist says, for example, that we are not free, though he is convinced, of course, that he asserts this freely, that no one is forcing him to state this view of the matter — neither parents, not social milieu, nor biological inheritance. He says that we are wholly determined by our history, but he never stops urging us to free ourselves, to change our destiny, to revolt where possible! He says that we must love the world as it is, turning our backs on past and future so as to live in the present, but he never stops trying, like you or me, when the present weighs upon us, to change it in hope of a better world. In brief, the materialist sets forth philosophical these that are profound, but always for you and me, never for himself. Always, he reintroduces transcendence — liberty, a vision for society, the ideal — because in truth he cannot not believe himself to be free, and therefore answerable to values higher than nature and history.”
― Luc Ferry, quote from A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

About the author

Popular quotes

“But the greatest mistake is in believing that we are 'only human… ' We are human in expression but divine in creation and limitless in potentiality.”
― quote from Discover the Power Within You

“Here are the benefits you can expect from using this style of pseudocode: Pseudocode makes reviews easier. You can review detailed designs without examining source code. Pseudocode makes low-level design reviews easier and reduces the need to review the code itself. Pseudocode supports the idea of iterative refinement. You start with a high-level design, refine the design to pseudocode, and then refine the pseudocode to source code. This successive refinement in small steps allows you to check your design as you drive it to lower levels of detail. The result is that you catch high-level errors at the highest level, mid-level errors at the middle level, and low-level errors at the lowest level—before any of them becomes a problem or contaminates work at more detailed levels. Pseudocode makes changes easier. A few lines of pseudocode are easier to change than a page of code. Would you rather change a line on a blueprint or rip out a wall and nail in the two-by-fours somewhere else? The effects aren't as physically dramatic in software, but the principle of changing the product when it's most malleable is the same. One of the keys to the success of a project is to catch errors at the "least-value stage," the stage at which the least effort has been invested. Much less has been invested at the pseudocode stage than after full coding, testing, and debugging, so it makes economic sense to catch the errors early.”
― quote from Code Complete

“You think I’m broken, don’t you? You think I should be fixed. You want me to be normal. I’ll never be your version of normal, Lis. I’ll never be like you – like them.”
“I’m not trying to fix you, Daniel. I just want you to be happy. I love you just the way you are.”
― Jane Harvey-Berrick, quote from Dangerous to Know & Love

“and his presence, to always ask myself why people acted the way they did, and to look with compassion at the suffering that must invariably lie at the root of problem behaviors. I have found this invaluable in my subsequent dealings with other difficult people. My”
― quote from Thank You for Being Such a Pain: Spiritual Guidance for Dealing with Difficult People

“all the hours you grope along the night trail, all the way down to the valley so low, till you bless God for the little crumb of light that means a human home, and you ache and pray to get to that home, be it ever so humble, so you’ll be safe in the light.”
― Manly Wade Wellman, quote from Who Fears The Devil

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.