Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

- Dickens, Charles

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

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

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.

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.

Teasdale, Sara

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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.

Epictetus

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

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

Zend, Robert

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

Yeats, William Butler

10.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

11.

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

Brookner, Anita

12.

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

13.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

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

James, William

15.

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.

Smith, Sydney

16.

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

17.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

18.

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

Pinter, Harold

19.

Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.

Whitehead, Alfred North

20.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

21.

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.

Popper, Karl

22.

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

Berkeley, George

23.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

24.

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

Stevens, Wallace

25.

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

Camus, Albert

26.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

27.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Seneca

31.

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

Pascal, Blaise

32.

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.

33.

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

Stevens, Wallace

34.

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

Rohn, Jim

35.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

36.

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

Murdoch, Iris

37.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

38.

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

39.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

40.

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?

Kant, Immanuel

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

45.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

46.

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

Burroughs, John

47.

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

48.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

49.

The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.

Voltaire

50.

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

Diderot, Denis