Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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.

- Aquinas, St. Thomas

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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.

Socrates

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

Stevens, Wallace

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.

Berkeley, George

When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.

Lippmann, Walter

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

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.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Keep quiet and people will think you a 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.

Keats, John

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

10.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

11.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

12.

Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!

Murdoch, Iris

13.

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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.

Twain, Mark

15.

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.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

16.

If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

17.

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.

Yeats, William Butler

18.

The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

19.

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.

Milton, John

20.

The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food.

Reade, W. Winwood

21.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

22.

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.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

23.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

Cicero, Marcus T.

24.

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

Gauguin, Paul

25.

I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.

Edwards, Oliver

26.

If he really thinks there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

Johnson, Samuel

27.

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.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

28.

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.

Voltaire

29.

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.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

30.

Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

Pinter, Harold

31.

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.

Colton, Charles Caleb

32.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Pascal, Blaise

33.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

34.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

Camus, Albert

35.

Philosophers call God the great unknown The great misknown is more like it!

Roux, Joseph

36.

Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one.

Seneca

37.

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.

Donne, John

38.

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.

Melville, Herman

39.

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.

Brookner, Anita

40.

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.

Shaw, George Bernard

41.

One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.

Burroughs, John

42.

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.

Pascal, Blaise

43.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

Marx, Karl

44.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

45.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

46.

Being a philosopher, I have a problem for every solution.

Zend, Robert

47.

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.

Plato

48.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

49.

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.

Sagan, Carl Edward

50.

To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand