Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Johnson, Samuel

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Murdoch, Iris

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

Berkeley, George

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

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

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

Zend, Robert

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

Marx, Karl

10.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

11.

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

12.

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

Pinter, Harold

13.

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.

Yeats, William Butler

14.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

James, William

15.

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

Pascal, Blaise

16.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

17.

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

18.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

19.

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

20.

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

Gauguin, Paul

21.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

27.

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

28.

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

Seneca

29.

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

Stevens, Wallace

30.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

31.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

32.

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

33.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

34.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

35.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

37.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

38.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

39.

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

40.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

41.

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

Lippmann, Walter

42.

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

43.

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

Edwards, Oliver

44.

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

Roux, Joseph

45.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

46.

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

47.

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

Rohn, Jim

48.

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

49.

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

Voltaire

50.

Tell me what gives a man or woman their greatest pleasure and I'll tell you their philosophy of life.

Carnegie, Dale