Philosophers and Philosophy Quotes
Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.Philosophers and Philosophy
Adams, Henry Brooks
1838-1918 American Historian
The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists -- in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Amiel, Henri Frederic
1821-1881 Swiss Philosopher Poet Critic
Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Aquinas, St. Thomas
1225-1274 Italian Scholastic Philosopher and Theologian
The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Ayer, Sir Alfred Jules
1910-1989 British Philosopher
We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Bacon, Francis
1561-1626 British Philosopher Essayist Statesman
In it he proves that all things are true and states how the truths of all contradictions may be reconciled physically, such as for example that white is black and black is white; that one can be and not be at the same time; that there can be hills without valleys; that nothingness is something and that everything, which is, is not. But take note that he proves all these unheard-of paradoxes without any fallacious or sophistical reasoning.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Bergerac, Savinien Cyrano De
1619-1655 French Satirist Playwright
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Berkeley, George
1685-1753 Irish-born British Bishop Philosopher
A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Bierce, Ambrose
1842-1914 American Author Editor Journalist The Devil's Dictionary
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Bierce, Ambrose
1842-1914 American Author Editor Journalist The Devil's Dictionary
Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Brookner, Anita
1938 British Novelist Art Historian
Look, I really don t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you re alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you re quiet, you re not living. You ve got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Brooks, Mel
1926 American Actor Director
Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.
1803-1873 British Novelist Poet
One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Burroughs, John
1837-1921 American Naturalist Author
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Butler, Samuel
1612-1680 British Poet Satirist
Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates -- but pages might be filled up, as vainly as before, with the sad usage of all sorts of sages, who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore! The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Byron, Lord
1788-1824 British Poet
Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Camus, Albert
1913-1960 French Existential Writer
The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Canetti, Elias
1905 Austrian Novelist Philosopher
Tell me what gives a man or woman their greatest pleasure and I ll tell you their philosophy of life.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Carnegie, Dale
1888-1955 American Author Trainer
To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Celine, Louis-Ferdinand
1894-1961 French Author
Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De
1741-1794 French Writer Journalist Playwright
A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
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Chesterton, Gilbert K.
1874-1936 British Author
The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Chesterton, Gilbert K.
1874-1936 British Author
There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Cicero, Marcus T.
c 106-43 BC Great Roman Orator Politician
Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Cicero, Marcus T.
c 106-43 BC Great Roman Orator Politician
Philosophy is a bully that talks loud when the danger is at a distant; but, the moment she is pressed hard by an enemy, she is nowhere to be found and leaves the brunt of the battle to be fought by her steady, humble comrade, religion.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Colton, Charles Caleb
1780-1832 British Sportsman Writer
There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.
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Descartes, Rene
1596-1650 French Philosopher Scientist
Philosophers are only men in armor after all.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Dickens, Charles
1812-1870 British Novelist
The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Diderot, Denis
1713-1784 French Philosopher
Of what use is a philosopher who doesn t hurt anybody s feelings?
Philosophers and Philosophy
Diogenes of Sinope
c410-320 BC Cynic Philosopher
And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Donne, John
1572-1632 British Metaphysical Poet
I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Edwards, Oliver
Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist
If you set your heart upon philosophy, you must straightway prepare yourself to be laughed at and mocked by many who will say Behold a philosopher arisen among us! or How came you by that brow of scorn? But do you cherish no scorn, but hold to those things which seem to you the best, as one set by God in that place. Remember too, that if you abide in those ways, those who first mocked you, the same shall afterwards reverence you; but if you yield to them, you will be laughed at twice as much as before.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Epictetus
50-120 Stoic Philosopher
As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea s foot and marveling at a midge s humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Erasmus, Desiderius
c1466-1536 Dutch Humanist
I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Feuerbach, Ludwig
1804-1872 German Philosopher
If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)
1712-1786 Born in Berlin King of Prussia (1740-1786)
Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Froude, James A.
1818-1894 British Historian
Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?
Philosophers and Philosophy
Gauguin, Paul
1848-1903 French Artist
The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von
1749-1832 German Poet Dramatist Novelist
There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Goldsmith, Oliver
1728-1774 Anglo-Irish Author Poet Playwright
The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophic study.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Hegel, Georg
1770-1831 German Philosopher
Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Hegel, Georg
1770-1831 German Philosopher
To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else s type of thinking.
Philosophers and Philosophy
James, William
1842-1910 American Psychologist Professor Author
I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
Philosophers and Philosophy
James, William
1842-1910 American Psychologist Professor Author
Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.
Philosophers and Philosophy
James, William
1842-1910 American Psychologist Professor Author
While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato s Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?
Philosophers and Philosophy
Jefferson, Thomas
1743-1826 Third President of the USA
If he really thinks there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author
All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?
Philosophers and Philosophy
Kant, Immanuel
1724-1804 German Philosopher
Do not all charms fly at the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: we know her woof, her texture; she is given in the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel s wings, conquer all mysteries by rule and line, empty the haunted air, and gnome mine unweave a rainbow.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Keats, John
1795-1821 British Poet
Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Kierkegaard, Soren
1813-1855 Danish Philosopher Writer
In the information age, you don t teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he d have a talk show.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Leary, Timothy
1921-1996 American Actor
We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Lichtenberg, Georg C.
1742-1799 German Physicist Satirist
If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Lichtenberg, Georg C.
1742-1799 German Physicist Satirist
When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Lippmann, Walter
1889-1974 American Journalist
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what s empty. Empty what s full and scratch where it itches.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Longworth, Alice Roosevelt
1884-1980 American Author Daughter of Theodore Roosevelt
In Plato s opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon s opinion, philosophy was made for man.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Macaulay, Thomas B.
1800-1859 American Essayist and Historian
There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Maistre, Joseph De
1753-1821 French Diplomat Philosopher
Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Marx, Karl
1818-1883 German Political Theorist Social Philosopher
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Marx, Karl
1818-1883 German Political Theorist Social Philosopher
Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory -- the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have out paper allegories but ill comprehended.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Melville, Herman
1819-1891 American Author
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Mencken, H. L.
1880-1956 American Editor Author Critic Humorist
There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Mencken, H. L.
1880-1956 American Editor Author Critic Humorist
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Miller, Henry
1891-1980 American Author
How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo s lute, and a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Milton, John
1608-1674 British Poet
Philosophy is doubt.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De
1533-1592 French Philosopher Essayist
Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
Philosophers and Philosophy
Murdoch, Iris
1919 British Novelist Philosopher
In philosophy if you aren t moving at a snail s pace you aren t moving at all.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Murdoch, Iris
1919 British Novelist Philosopher
The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Nietzsche, Friedrich
1844-1900 German Philosopher
Actual philosophers... are commanders and law-givers: they say thus it shall be!, it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical laborers, of all those who have subdued the past -- they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer. Their knowing is creating, their creating is a law giving, their will to truth is -- will to power. Are their such philosophers today? Have there been such philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers?
Philosophers and Philosophy
Nietzsche, Friedrich
1844-1900 German Philosopher
Plato was a bore.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Nietzsche, Friedrich
1844-1900 German Philosopher
Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Nietzsche, Friedrich
1844-1900 German Philosopher
To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Pascal, Blaise
1623-1662 French Scientist Religious Philosopher
The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Pascal, Blaise
1623-1662 French Scientist Religious Philosopher
Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
Philosophers and Philosophy
Pinter, Harold
1930 British Playwright Director
Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Plato
BC 427-347 Greek Philosopher
Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle -- the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Popper, Karl
1902-1994 Australian Philosopher
Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Proverb
Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Quinet, Edgar
1803-1875 French Poet Historian Politician
The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Reade, W. Winwood
1838-1875 American Writer
Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Rohn, Jim
American Businessman Author Speaker Philosopher
The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Rorty, Richard
1931 American Philosopher
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Rousseau, Jean Jacques
1712-1778 Swiss Political Philosopher Educationist Essayist
Philosophers call God the great unknown The great misknown is more like it!
Philosophers and Philosophy
Roux, Joseph
1834-1905 French Priest Writer
Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Russell, Bertrand
1872-1970 British Philosopher Mathematician Essayist
The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Sade, Marquis De
1740-1814 French Author
There is today-in a time when old beliefs are withering-a kind of philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are and how we got here. It is an on-going search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective for humanity.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Sagan, Carl Edward
1934 American Astronomer author
How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Schopenhauer, Arthur
1788-1860 German Philosopher
Philosophy is nothing but discretion.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Selden, John
1584-1654 British Jurist Statesman
Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Seneca
4 BC – 65 AD Spanish-born Roman Statesman philosopher
For there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Shakespeare, William
1564-1616 British Poet Playwright Actor
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Shakespeare, William
1564-1616 British Poet Playwright Actor
The philosopher is Nature s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Shaw, George Bernard
1856-1950 Irish-born British Dramatist
Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained, after his time, but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Smith, Sydney
1771-1845 British Writer Clergyman
Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Socrates
BC 469-399 Greek Philosopher of Athens
A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Stein, Gertrude
1874-1946 American Author
The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Stevens, Wallace
1879-1955 American Poet
Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Stevens, Wallace
1879-1955 American Poet
Reason, progress, unselfishness, a wide historical perspective, expansiveness, generosity, enlightened self-interest. I had heard it all my life, and it filled me with despair.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Tait, Katherine
Then, like an old-time orator impressively he rose; I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Teasdale, Sara
1884-1933 American Poet
What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?
Philosophers and Philosophy
Thoreau, Henry David
1817-1862 American Essayist Poet Naturalist
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Thoreau, Henry David
1817-1862 American Essayist Poet Naturalist
If He Tom Sawyer had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Twain, Mark
1835-1910 American Humorist Writer
Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Unknown, Source
The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Voltaire
1694-1778 French Historian Writer
When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Voltaire
1694-1778 French Historian Writer
The proper method of philosophy consists in clearly conceiving the insoluble problems in all their insolubility and then in simply contemplating them, fixedly and tirelessly, year after year, without any hope, patiently waiting.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Weil, Simone
1910-1943 French Philosopher Mystic
Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Whitehead, Alfred North
1861-1947 British Mathematician Philosopher
Philosophy is the product of wonder.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Whitehead, Alfred North
1861-1947 British Mathematician Philosopher
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
1889-1951 Austrian Philosopher
It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
1889-1951 Austrian Philosopher
Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
1889-1951 Austrian Philosopher
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
1889-1951 Austrian Philosopher
The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. -- The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
1889-1951 Austrian Philosopher
Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Yeats, William Butler
1865-1939 Irish Poet Playwright
Being a philosopher, I have a problem for every solution.
Philosophers and Philosophy
Zend, Robert