Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Russell, Bertrand

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

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

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

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

Pascal, Blaise

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

Marx, Karl

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

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

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

10.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

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

Rohn, Jim

12.

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

Murdoch, Iris

13.

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

14.

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

Diderot, Denis

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.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

18.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

19.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

20.

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

Hegel, Georg

21.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

22.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

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 doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

25.

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

Stevens, Wallace

26.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

27.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

28.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

29.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

30.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

31.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Zend, Robert

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Seneca

40.

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

Burroughs, John

41.

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

42.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

43.

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

44.

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

Johnson, Samuel

45.

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

Pinter, Harold

46.

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

47.

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

Descartes, Rene

48.

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

49.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

50.

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

Berkeley, George