Motivational Quotes

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

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

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

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

The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists -- in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

12.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

13.

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

14.

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

Pinter, Harold

15.

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

Berkeley, George

16.

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

17.

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

Murdoch, Iris

18.

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

19.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

20.

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

Pascal, Blaise

21.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

22.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

23.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

24.

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

25.

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

Johnson, Samuel

26.

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

27.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Camus, Albert

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Stevens, Wallace

35.

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

36.

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

Burroughs, John

37.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

38.

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

James, William

39.

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

Yeats, William Butler

40.

How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's lute, and a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.

Milton, John

41.

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

Rohn, Jim

42.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

43.

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

44.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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