Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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.

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Berkeley, George

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

Murdoch, Iris

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Pascal, Blaise

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

Diderot, Denis

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

Diogenes of Sinope

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Descartes, Rene

10.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

11.

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

12.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Pinter, Harold

16.

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.

Bergerac, Savinien Cyrano De

17.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

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

19.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

20.

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

Voltaire

21.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

22.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

23.

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.

Feuerbach, Ludwig

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Edwards, Oliver

27.

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

28.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

29.

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

30.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

35.

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.

Weil, Simone

36.

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

Hegel, Georg

37.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

38.

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

Camus, Albert

39.

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

Johnson, Samuel

40.

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

Stevens, Wallace

41.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

42.

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

Stevens, Wallace

43.

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

Gauguin, Paul

44.

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

Miller, Henry

45.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

46.

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

James, William

47.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

48.

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.

Erasmus, Desiderius

49.

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

50.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg