Motivational Quotes

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Diogenes of Sinope

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

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

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

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

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

Voltaire

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

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

11.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

12.

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

13.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

14.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

15.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

16.

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

Seneca

17.

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

18.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

19.

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

Zend, Robert

20.

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

21.

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

22.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

26.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

27.

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

Edwards, Oliver

28.

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

Brookner, Anita

29.

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

30.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

31.

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

Pinter, Harold

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Marx, Karl

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.

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

Pascal, Blaise

39.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

40.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

41.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

42.

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

Stevens, Wallace

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.

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

45.

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

Russell, Bertrand

46.

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

Stevens, Wallace

47.

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

Burroughs, John

48.

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

49.

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

Hegel, Georg

50.

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