Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Burroughs, John

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

Rohn, Jim

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.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

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

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

James, William

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

Berkeley, George

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

10.

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

Pascal, Blaise

11.

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

Murdoch, Iris

12.

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

Pinter, Harold

13.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

14.

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

15.

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

Hegel, Georg

16.

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

17.

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.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

19.

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?

Jefferson, Thomas

20.

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

Seneca

21.

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

22.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Descartes, Rene

26.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

30.

Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never.

Russell, Bertrand

31.

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

Camus, Albert

32.

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

33.

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

34.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

35.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

36.

Then, like an old-time orator impressively he rose; I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.

Teasdale, Sara

37.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

38.

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.

Leary, Timothy

39.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

40.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

41.

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

Murdoch, Iris

42.

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

Zend, Robert

43.

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

44.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

45.

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

Gauguin, Paul

46.

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

47.

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

Stevens, Wallace

48.

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

49.

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

Burroughs, John

50.

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.