Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

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

Russell, Bertrand

Reason, progress, unselfishness, a wide historical perspective, expansiveness, generosity, enlightened self-interest. I had heard it all my life, and it filled me with despair.

Tait, Katherine

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

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

Edwards, Oliver

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

Zend, Robert

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

Thoreau, Henry David

10.

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

Gauguin, Paul

11.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

12.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

13.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

14.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Voltaire

19.

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

20.

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

Johnson, Samuel

21.

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

22.

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

Rohn, Jim

23.

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.

24.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

25.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

26.

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

27.

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

Diderot, Denis

28.

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

Pinter, Harold

29.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

39.

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

40.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

41.

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

Marx, Karl

42.

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

Lippmann, Walter

43.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

47.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

48.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

49.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.