Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.

The community of masses of human beings has produced an order of life in regulated channels which connects individuals in a technically functioning organisation, but not inwardly from the historicity of their souls.

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.

At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.

The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought.

The study of law left me unsatisfied, because I did not know the aspects of life which it serves. I perceived only the intricate mental juggling with fictions that did not interest me.

As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.

Philosophic meditation is an accomplishment by which I attain Being and my own self, not impartial thinking which studies a subject with indifference.

Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.

Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought.

Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.

I began the study of medicine, impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.

The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.

Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it.

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.

Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension.

Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.

Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action.

If philosophy is practice, a demand to know the manner in which its history is to be studied is entailed: a theoretical attitude toward it becomes real only in the living appropriation of its contents from the texts.

My own being can be judged by the depths I reach in making these historical origins my own.

I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker's questions to become comprehensible.

Conflicts may be the sources of defeat lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far reaching unities which flourish in the tensions that engender them

A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific.

A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.

I had been offered a Hollywood contract before my 18th birthday. It gave me the spark I needed.

I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar.

I love photography. My boyfriend's got a great camera, which I bought for his birthday.

The best way to remember your wife's birthday is to remember it once.

It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people.

Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.

This is a wonderful way to celebrate an 80th birthday... I wanted to be 65 again, but they wouldn't let me - Homeland Security.

You know, we'd just had a birthday, he was... you know, he still had a future out of him, and all I can is he was just one of the most beautiful people in the world... a very gifted man, and it's a loss to the world, not just for us.

It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator, our very self-consciousness, is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.

With a recent birthday, I've been acting now for twenty years.

On my birthday, I was in Milan for the collections.

I crashed my boyfriend's birthday when I was 12 years old. He didn't invite me and so I showed up.

I wasn't very good about juggling family and my career. I was interested in who was coming to the children's birthday party, what my son was writing. I was thinking about Legos.

I remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing 'Happy Birthday.'

My mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, so I said I wanted to read poetry with her.

The way I see it, you should live everyday like its your birthday.

I'm trying to get the record that I made at my birthday party last year, trying to get that out, and the lawyers are diddling around with it and it probably won't be out until next year. I don't know.

I had arranged a birthday party for him and my children, who are all Aquarians. Instead, we got married. I ran out of excuses. It was just us and my children.

My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

Every year on your birthday, you get a chance to start new.

My best kiss was on stage. Kelly Rowland from Destiny's Child gave me a really nice soft kiss on my lips during a performance on my birthday. It was amazing.

I had a birthday one night on a farm we were shooting on. I walked into the tent, and there were 150 people waiting for me, all wearing masks of my face.

I play PC and Xbox games at home, and I just got a PSP as a birthday present.

I trained to be a priest - started to. I went to seminary school when I was 11. I wanted to be a priest, but when they told me I could never have sex, not even on my birthday, I changed my mind.