Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Russell, Bertrand

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

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

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

Yeats, William Butler

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

Burroughs, John

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

Camus, Albert

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Diderot, Denis

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

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

10.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

11.

There is today-in a time when old beliefs are withering-a kind of philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are and how we got here. It is an on-going search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective for humanity.

Sagan, Carl Edward

12.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

13.

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

Zend, Robert

14.

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

15.

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

Lippmann, Walter

16.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

17.

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

Brookner, Anita

18.

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

19.

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

Russell, Bertrand

20.

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

21.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

25.

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

26.

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

Rohn, Jim

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

29.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

30.

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

31.

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

Pascal, Blaise

32.

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

33.

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

Miller, Henry

34.

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

Murdoch, Iris

35.

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

36.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

37.

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

Murdoch, Iris

38.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

39.

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

Berkeley, George

40.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

41.

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

42.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

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

Marx, Karl

46.

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

47.

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

Gauguin, Paul

48.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

49.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

50.

Philosophy is doubt.