Test Gems and Paper Jewels

The foundation of this display of quotations from philosophy exams and papers is a portion of the extensive collection assembled by Professor Bruce Hauptli of Florida International University. All extracts are direct quotations. Please send contributions to this page to Howard Pospesel (pospesel@miami.edu).

"The consistency of Socrates' ideas and beliefs are very inconsistent."

"It was these principles that made Socrates one of the great minds of our time."

"Socrates is told by the god, through the oracle at Delphi, that he knows everything."

Socrates' options at the trial: "vanishment, a monetary fine, imprisonment, or death."

"A Greek philosopher by the name of Socrates attempted to answer the question by posing a variety of questions to test the validity of the people's first response to the question in a market place."

". . . The workers would be craftsmen and trade people."

"Anselm's idea of God as something than which nothing greater exists is true . . . even though grammatically it is not perfect."

"cogito ergo seem"

"Only the individual would know if he is deceiving himself."

"In Meditation III, Descartes made his argument air-tight by bringing about the existence of god."

"The reason why Ryle's objection would not be effective against Descartes' argument is that Ryle does not take into consideration the fact that Descartes does away, not just from the information obtained through the senses, but from the senses as well."

". . . His fear of parliamentarians led him to establish a new home in Holland."

"I believe that the state of nature is inevitable, but with the correct changes, it can become avoidable."

"Although Hobbes' view is contradictory, therefore problematic, it is generally correct in concept and thus can be accepted as valid."

"Pascal makes it clear that though we have an understanding of infinity, we don't understand it."

"So, to start to think critically would not only be hard but it would also go against some reasoning in our mind that we have always had."

". . . For murder, there is no in between. It is either wrong or right."

"Psychological egoism has both good and bad points. It's good in that one's only concern is for one's self-interest. Yet it's bad because seeking one's self-interest means being selfish."

"Ultimately, this objection against this utilitarian way of thinking is well grounded because it is ridiculous under this circumstance to consider only the consequence and not what is actually going to be accomplished."

"At this point he errored."

"To coin an age-old phrase. . . ."

"This may be understood, but does not make any sense whatsoever."

". . . No one is immortal except for those that are dead already."

"Usually, people often become aware of your present sensations only when they malfunction."

"Hick says that God should have never created evil and then there would be no problem of evil."

Collected by Harold Zellner, Kent State University, Trumbull Campus

Collected by Howard Pospesel, University of Miami

Collected by Alan Goldman, University of Miami

Collected by Lamar Crosby, formerly of Hollins College, and contributed by James Rachels, University of Alabama at Birmingham

"Parents may not approve of a teacher that is a Christian and is teaching values to their son, which is of Methodist religion."

"Then there was Immanuel Kant who discovered Kantianism."

These three collected by Owen Herring, Lycoming College

"The problem about sleeping around is that it leaves you with low self of steam."

These two collected by Steve Griffith, Lycoming College

Contributed by Mark LeBar, University of Arizona

"adamant and inadamant objects"

"Desecrates"

          These two collected by Kirstin Nystrom, University of Minnesota