Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Descartes, Rene

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

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

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

Seneca

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

Roux, Joseph

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

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

Miller, Henry

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

10.

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

Murdoch, Iris

11.

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

Johnson, Samuel

12.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

13.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

14.

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

15.

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

Lippmann, Walter

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

20.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

22.

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

23.

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

Rorty, Richard

24.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

25.

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

Pinter, Harold

26.

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

27.

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

Pascal, Blaise

28.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

32.

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

33.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

34.

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

35.

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

Brookner, Anita

36.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

37.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

38.

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

39.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

40.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

41.

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

42.

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

James, William

43.

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

Berkeley, George

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Russell, Bertrand

48.

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

Burroughs, John

49.

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

50.

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