Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

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

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

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

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

Hegel, Georg

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

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

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

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

10.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

11.

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

Diderot, Denis

12.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

13.

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

14.

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

Stevens, Wallace

15.

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

16.

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

Yeats, William Butler

17.

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

18.

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

Murdoch, Iris

19.

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

Johnson, Samuel

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Russell, Bertrand

23.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

24.

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

25.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

26.

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

Brookner, Anita

27.

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

Burroughs, John

28.

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

29.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

30.

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

Zend, Robert

31.

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

Stevens, Wallace

32.

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

33.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

34.

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

35.

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

Camus, Albert

36.

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

37.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

38.

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

Miller, Henry

39.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

40.

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

41.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

42.

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

43.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

44.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

45.

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

46.

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

Pascal, Blaise

47.

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

Lippmann, Walter

48.

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

Pinter, Harold

49.

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