Philosophy Quote by Stanley Cavell — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“A photograph does not present us with ‘likenesses’ of things; it presents us, we want to say, with the things themselves. But wanting to say that may well make us ontologically restless. ‘Photographs present us with things themselves’ sounds, and ought to sound, paradoxical … It is no less paradoxical or false to hold up a photograph of Garbo and say, ‘That is not Garbo,’ if all you mean is that the object you are holding up is not a human creature. Such troubles in notating so obvious a fact suggest that we do not know what a photograph is; we do not know how to place it ontologically. We might say that we don’t know how to think of the connection between a photograph and what it is a photograph of.”

“Normal is over rated, and so is spelling.You want perfection? Go out and buy a spell check, but know this: Spellcheck won't keep you warm at night or love you unconditionaly. I will stick to being abnormal and a bad speller. Makes life more interesting. After all, what fun is there in being normal or perfect?”

“It takes too much energy to be against something unless it's really important.”

“Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passionately, but he felt heavy and earth-bound. He climbed ecstatic mountains and floundered in the rocky darkness between the peaks. He had spurts of bravery but they were bracketed in battens of cowardice.”

“♫ I learned a lesson today: never judge a person by the way they act, nor how they dress, or the way they have their disabilities. Because everyone on Earth suffers the same hell, whether in love or hate, life or death.”

“whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived”