Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.

Goldsmith, Oliver

Tell me what gives a man or woman their greatest pleasure and I'll tell you their philosophy of life.

Carnegie, Dale

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

Camus, Albert

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

Stevens, Wallace

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

10.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

12.

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

13.

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

Pascal, Blaise

14.

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

15.

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

Edwards, Oliver

16.

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

Zend, Robert

17.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

18.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

19.

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

Yeats, William Butler

20.

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

Seneca

21.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

22.

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

23.

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

Stevens, Wallace

24.

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

25.

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

Murdoch, Iris

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Brookner, Anita

29.

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

30.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

31.

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

Descartes, Rene

32.

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

Hegel, Georg

33.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

34.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

35.

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

Miller, Henry

36.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

37.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

38.

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

Pinter, Harold

39.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

40.

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

41.

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

Russell, Bertrand

42.

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

43.

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.

44.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

45.

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

Johnson, Samuel

46.

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

Rohn, Jim

47.

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

48.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

49.

Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

50.

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