Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Carnegie, Dale

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

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

Yeats, William Butler

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

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

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

Berkeley, George

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

Pascal, Blaise

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

Roux, Joseph

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

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

10.

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

11.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

12.

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

13.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

14.

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

Gauguin, Paul

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

19.

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

Brookner, Anita

20.

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

21.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

22.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

23.

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

24.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

25.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

26.

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

27.

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

Burroughs, John

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Diderot, Denis

32.

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

33.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

34.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

35.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

40.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

41.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

42.

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

Zend, Robert

43.

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

Seneca

44.

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

Stevens, Wallace

45.

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

Russell, Bertrand

46.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

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

48.

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

Murdoch, Iris

49.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

50.

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

Stevens, Wallace