Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

I acknowledge, that, in the present order of things, virtue is attended with more peace of mind than vice, and meets with a more favourable reception from the world.

Thus, mathematical linguistics seems for the moment to be in a uniquely favourable position, among mathematical approaches in the social and psychological sciences, to develop not simply as a theory of data, but as the study of highly abstract principles and structures that determine the character of human mental processes.

I have tried to suggest that the study of language may very well, as was traditionally supposed, provide a remarkably favourable perspective for the study of human mental processes.

Circumstances favourable and unfavourable to Natural Selection, namely, intercrossing, isolation, number of individuals.

Circumstances favourable to Man's power of Selection.

Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.

We shall, however, be enabled to discuss what circumstances are most favourable to variation.

Circumstances favourable to Man's power of Selection.

It is also a most favourable circumstance for the production of distinct breeds, that male and female pigeons can be easily mated for life; and thus different breeds can be kept together in the same aviary.

I must now say a few words on the circumstances, favourable, or the reverse, to man's power of selection.