Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.

Descartes, Rene

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

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

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Seneca

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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 is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

Pinter, Harold

10.

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

Diderot, Denis

11.

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

12.

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

Johnson, Samuel

13.

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

Gauguin, Paul

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Edwards, Oliver

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

21.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

24.

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

25.

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

Lippmann, Walter

26.

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.

Donne, John

27.

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

28.

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

29.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Kant, Immanuel

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

33.

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

34.

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

Rohn, Jim

35.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

36.

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

37.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

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

39.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

40.

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

Zend, Robert

41.

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

Russell, Bertrand

42.

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

Miller, Henry

43.

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

44.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

45.

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

Brookner, Anita

46.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

47.

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

48.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

49.

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

50.

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