Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Brookner, Anita

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

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

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

Yeats, William Butler

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.

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

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

Diogenes of Sinope

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

Rohn, Jim

10.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

11.

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

Murdoch, Iris

12.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

13.

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

Seneca

14.

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

15.

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

Johnson, Samuel

16.

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

Voltaire

17.

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

18.

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

Murdoch, Iris

19.

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

Marx, Karl

20.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

24.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

25.

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

Stevens, Wallace

26.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

27.

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

28.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

29.

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

30.

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

Stevens, Wallace

31.

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

32.

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

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.

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

Zend, Robert

35.

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

36.

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

Pascal, Blaise

37.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

39.

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

Berkeley, George

40.

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

41.

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

Lippmann, Walter

42.

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

Camus, Albert

43.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

44.

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

45.

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

Diderot, Denis

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

James, William

49.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

50.

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