Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Zend, Robert

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

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

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Carnegie, Dale

13.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

14.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

15.

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

Seneca

16.

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

17.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

18.

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

19.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

20.

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

Berkeley, George

21.

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

22.

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

Descartes, Rene

23.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

24.

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

James, William

25.

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

26.

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

Murdoch, Iris

27.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

28.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

29.

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

Stevens, Wallace

30.

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

Roux, Joseph

31.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

32.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

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.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

36.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

37.

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

38.

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

Camus, Albert

39.

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

Pascal, Blaise

40.

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

Voltaire

41.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

42.

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

43.

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

Miller, Henry

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Murdoch, Iris

48.

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

49.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

50.

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