Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

- Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

Diderot, Denis

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

Voltaire

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

Roux, Joseph

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

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

Pascal, Blaise

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

10.

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

11.

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

Gauguin, Paul

12.

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

13.

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

Hegel, Georg

14.

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

15.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

16.

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

17.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

18.

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

Seneca

19.

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

20.

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

Lippmann, Walter

21.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

22.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

23.

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

Miller, Henry

24.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

25.

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

26.

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

Burroughs, John

27.

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

28.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

29.

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

Descartes, Rene

30.

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

Berkeley, George

31.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

32.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Murdoch, Iris

38.

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

39.

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

Marx, Karl

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

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

Rohn, Jim

44.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

45.

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

46.

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

Pinter, Harold

47.

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

48.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

49.

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

50.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.