Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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.

- Brooks, Mel

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.

Rorty, Richard

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Berkeley, George

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

Rohn, Jim

In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all.

Murdoch, Iris

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

James, William

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

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

10.

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

11.

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

Edwards, Oliver

12.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

13.

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

Zend, Robert

14.

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

Burroughs, John

15.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

16.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

17.

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

18.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

19.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

20.

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

21.

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

Lippmann, Walter

22.

Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.

Stevens, Wallace

23.

I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full and scratch where it itches.

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

24.

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.

Stein, Gertrude

25.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

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

Murdoch, Iris

29.

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

30.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?

Diogenes of Sinope

31.

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

32.

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?

Thoreau, Henry David

33.

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

34.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

35.

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.

Sade, Marquis De

36.

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

Gauguin, Paul

37.

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

Stevens, Wallace

38.

The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophic study.

Hegel, Georg

39.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

40.

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

41.

Brooks, Mel

42.

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.

Canetti, Elias

43.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

Diderot, Denis

44.

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

45.

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

Marx, Karl

46.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

47.

There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.

Descartes, Rene

48.

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

Pascal, Blaise

49.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

50.

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