22 Woody Allen Quotes on Philosophy

Woody Allen quotes on philosophy

6. Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds and in the end, none of them knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do ... I read Socrates. This guy knocked off little Greek boys. What the Hell's he got to teach me? And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we're gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It's not worth it. And Freud, another great pessimist. I was in analysis for years and nothing happened. My poor analyst got so frustrated, the guy finally put in a salad bar. Maybe the poets are right. Maybe love is the only answer.

17. Can we actually 'know' the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown.

26. To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But, then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love, to be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness - I hope you're getting this down.

34. Sonja: Sex without love is an empty experience! Boris: Yes, but as empty experiences go, it's one of the best!

36. Sonja: Boris, Let me show you how absurd your position is. Let's say there is no God, and each man is free to do exactly as he chooses.What prevents you from murdering somebody? Boris: Murder's immoral. Sonja: Immorality is subjective. Boris: Yes, but subjectivity is objective. Sonja: Not in a rational scheme of perception. Boris: Perception is irrational. It implies immanence. Sonja: But judgment of any system of phenomena exists in any rational, metaphysical or epistemological contradiction to an abstracted empirical concept such as being, or to be, or to occur in the thing itself, or of the thing itself. Boris: Yeah, I've said that many times.

37. Him: Come to my quarters tomorrow at three. Sonja: I can't. Him: Please! Sonja: It's immoral. What time? Him: Who is to say what is moral? Sonja: Morality is subjective. Him: Subjectivity is objective. Sonja: Moral notions imply attributes to substances which exist only in relational duality. Him: Not as an essential extension of ontological existence. Sonja: Can we not talk about sex so much?

44. Sonja: I do believe that this is truly the best of all possible worlds. Boris: Well, it's certainly the most expensive.

50. What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

54. What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?

57. There's an old joke... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know; and such small portions.' Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness - and it's all over much too quickly.

61. Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage.

72. Of all the famous men who ever lived, the one I would most like to have been was Socrates. Not just because he was a great thinker, because I have been known to have some reasonably profound insights myself, although mine invariably revolve around a Swedish airline stewardess and some handcuffs.

73. Death is a state of non-being. That which is not, does not exist. Therefore death does not exist. Only truth exists. Truth and beauty. Each is interchangeable, but are aspects of themselves. Er, what specifically did they say they had in mind for me?

75. Agathon: But all that talk about death being the same as sleep. Socrates: Yes, the difference is that when you're dead and somebody yells, 'Everybody up, it's morning,' it's very hard to find your slippers.

87. Tradition is the illusion of permanence.

109. Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.

     Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

110. God is either cruel or incompetent.

113. How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?

114. How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?

126. If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse

139. Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

143. Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.