Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

- Whitehead, Alfred North

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Stevens, Wallace

Philosophers call God the great unknown The great misknown is more like it!

Roux, Joseph

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

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

Russell, Bertrand

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

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

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

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

10.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

11.

Tell me what gives a man or woman their greatest pleasure and I'll tell you their philosophy of life.

Carnegie, Dale

12.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

13.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

14.

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

15.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

16.

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

17.

I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.

Feuerbach, Ludwig

18.

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

Lippmann, Walter

19.

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

Diderot, Denis

20.

Look, I really don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively.

Brooks, Mel

21.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

22.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

26.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

27.

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

Marx, Karl

28.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

29.

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

30.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

31.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

32.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

33.

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

34.

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

Pascal, Blaise

35.

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

Hegel, Georg

36.

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

Stevens, Wallace

37.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

38.

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

39.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

40.

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

Pinter, Harold

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Edwards, Oliver

44.

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

Murdoch, Iris

45.

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

46.

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

48.

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

49.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

50.

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