Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

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

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

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

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

Murdoch, Iris

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

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

Diderot, Denis

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.

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

Pascal, Blaise

12.

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

13.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

14.

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

15.

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

Rohn, Jim

16.

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

17.

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

Seneca

18.

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

Stevens, Wallace

19.

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

Pinter, Harold

20.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

21.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

26.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

27.

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

Zend, Robert

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Gauguin, Paul

31.

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

Edwards, Oliver

32.

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

Burroughs, John

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

Stevens, Wallace

35.

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

Camus, Albert

36.

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

Voltaire

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Lippmann, Walter

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

43.

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

44.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

45.

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

46.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

47.

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

48.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

49.

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

Descartes, Rene

50.

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