Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Whitehead, Alfred North

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

Zend, Robert

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Pascal, Blaise

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

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

Stevens, Wallace

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

10.

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

Johnson, Samuel

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

14.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

15.

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

Voltaire

16.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Burroughs, John

20.

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

James, William

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Hegel, Georg

25.

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

Stevens, Wallace

26.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

27.

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

28.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

29.

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

Berkeley, George

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Camus, Albert

35.

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

Murdoch, Iris

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

40.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

41.

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

42.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

44.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

45.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

46.

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

47.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

48.

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

Gauguin, Paul

49.

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

Murdoch, Iris

50.

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