Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

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

Descartes, Rene

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

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

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

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

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

11.

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

Lippmann, Walter

12.

Actual philosophers... are commanders and law-givers: they say thus it shall be!, it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical laborers, of all those who have subdued the past -- they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer. Their knowing is creating, their creating is a law giving, their will to truth is -- will to power. Are their such philosophers today? Have there been such philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers?

Nietzsche, Friedrich

13.

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

Stevens, Wallace

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

17.

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

18.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

19.

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

20.

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

Voltaire

21.

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

Carnegie, Dale

22.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

23.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

24.

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

25.

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

Burroughs, John

26.

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

Russell, Bertrand

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 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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Gauguin, Paul

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Yeats, William Butler

38.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

39.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

40.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

41.

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

Hegel, Georg

42.

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

Zend, Robert

43.

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

Pascal, Blaise

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

47.

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

48.

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

Edwards, Oliver

49.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

50.

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