Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Gauguin, Paul

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Zend, Robert

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

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

James, William

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Roux, Joseph

12.

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

Murdoch, Iris

13.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

14.

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

Hegel, Georg

15.

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

Russell, Bertrand

16.

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

17.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

18.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

19.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

20.

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

21.

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

Gauguin, Paul

22.

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

Pinter, Harold

23.

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

Stevens, Wallace

24.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

25.

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

Yeats, William Butler

26.

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

27.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

28.

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

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.

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

31.

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

32.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

33.

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

34.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Rohn, Jim

39.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

40.

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

Camus, Albert

41.

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

Berkeley, George

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

49.

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

50.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques