Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

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

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

10.

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

Marx, Karl

11.

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

12.

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

Johnson, Samuel

13.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

14.

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

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.

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

Murdoch, Iris

17.

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

18.

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

Miller, Henry

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.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Diderot, Denis

24.

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

25.

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

Hegel, Georg

26.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

27.

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.

28.

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

29.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

30.

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

Pinter, Harold

31.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

32.

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

33.

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

Berkeley, George

34.

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

35.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

36.

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

Carnegie, Dale

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Gauguin, Paul

43.

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

Russell, Bertrand

44.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

45.

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

Voltaire

46.

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

James, William

47.

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

Stevens, Wallace

48.

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

49.

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

Camus, Albert

50.

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