Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Cicero, Marcus T.

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

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

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

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

Thoreau, Henry David

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

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

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Pinter, Harold

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

10.

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

11.

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

Brookner, Anita

12.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

13.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

14.

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

15.

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

Descartes, Rene

16.

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

Edwards, Oliver

17.

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

Pascal, Blaise

18.

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

Stevens, Wallace

19.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

20.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

21.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

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.

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

Berkeley, George

24.

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

25.

The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

26.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

27.

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

Roux, Joseph

28.

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

Burroughs, John

29.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

30.

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

31.

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

Gauguin, Paul

32.

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

Russell, Bertrand

33.

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

Marx, Karl

34.

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

Murdoch, Iris

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.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

37.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

38.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

39.

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

40.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

41.

There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.

Goldsmith, Oliver

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

45.

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

46.

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

Voltaire

47.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

Camus, Albert

48.

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

49.

The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.