Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Rousseau, Jean Jacques

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

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

Rohn, Jim

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

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

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

James, William

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

Hegel, Georg

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

11.

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

Edwards, Oliver

12.

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

Burroughs, John

13.

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

14.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Diderot, Denis

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

24.

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

Zend, Robert

25.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

26.

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

27.

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

28.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

Marx, Karl

29.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

30.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

31.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

32.

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

Camus, Albert

33.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

34.

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

35.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

36.

Philosophers call God the great unknown The great misknown is more like it!

Roux, Joseph

37.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

38.

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

Gauguin, Paul

39.

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

Seneca

40.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Russell, Bertrand

44.

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

45.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

46.

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

Miller, Henry

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg