Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

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

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

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

Murdoch, Iris

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Seneca

10.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

11.

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

Brookner, Anita

12.

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

Murdoch, Iris

13.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Marx, Karl

17.

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

18.

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

Burroughs, John

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Pascal, Blaise

22.

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

23.

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

Rohn, Jim

24.

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

Lippmann, Walter

25.

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

26.

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

Miller, Henry

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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

Edwards, Oliver

29.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Camus, Albert

33.

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

Stevens, Wallace

34.

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

Diderot, Denis

35.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

36.

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

James, William

37.

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

38.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

39.

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?

Thoreau, Henry David

40.

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

41.

Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.

Whitehead, Alfred North

42.

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

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.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

48.

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

Pinter, Harold

49.

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

Stevens, Wallace

50.

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