Michael J. Nelson famous quotes

The entire concept of pessimism crumbles the moment one human being puts aside thoughts of self and reaches out to another to minister to her suffering. The experience of either person can neither be denied nor adequately explained by a negative philosophy.
-- Michael J. Nelson

#Philosophy #Self #Suffering

At the 150-minute point of sitting in a standard theater chair, the human buttocks die; once dead, they cannot be revived. They cease to function, whatever that function may have been, and must be carried around like a sack, or two, of flour.
-- Michael J. Nelson

#Two #Sitting #May

Who doesn't want to go to the Emmys? But it ends up just being really boring.
-- Michael J. Nelson

#Being Real #Just Being #Want

Religion without philosophy is sentiment, or sometimes fanaticism, while philosophy without religion is mental speculation.

If a musician wants to blossom into a full-fledged person, it's not enough if he knows only classical music; nor it is enough if he's well-versed only in raagas and techniques. Instead, he should be a knowledgeable person interested in life and philosophy. In his personal life there should be, atleast in some corner of his heart, a tinge of lingering sorrow.

The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. And this is by no means so difficult a task as the history of philosophy would lead one to suppose. For if there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery.

Science has revealed that the human body is made up of millions and millions of atoms... For example, I am made up of 5.8x10^27 atoms.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

The principles of logic and mathematics are true universally simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, outlords succession's phlegm, and needs no ancestors.

I suffer from and enjoy an incredibly vivid dream life. A lot of times there is a sort-of narrative and other times they are just funhouses of non-linear imagery and other scary stuff.

When we start to suffer, it tells us something very valuable. It means that we are not seeing the truth, and we are not relating from the truth. It's a beautiful pointer. It never fails.