Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Diderot, Denis

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

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

Russell, Bertrand

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Edwards, Oliver

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Diogenes of Sinope

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 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

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

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

Stevens, Wallace

11.

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

Zend, Robert

12.

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

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

15.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

16.

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

17.

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

Hegel, Georg

18.

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

Camus, Albert

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

22.

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

23.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

24.

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

Johnson, Samuel

25.

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

Diderot, Denis

26.

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.

27.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

28.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Berkeley, George

32.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

33.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

34.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

35.

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

Pascal, Blaise

36.

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

Lippmann, Walter

37.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

38.

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

Roux, Joseph

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

James, William

42.

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

Brookner, Anita

43.

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

Murdoch, Iris

44.

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

45.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

46.

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

47.

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

Marx, Karl

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.

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

Descartes, Rene

50.

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