Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.

- Donne, John

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Marx, Karl

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

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

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

Berkeley, George

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

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

10.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

11.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

Carnegie, Dale

13.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

14.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

15.

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

Stevens, Wallace

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Roux, Joseph

19.

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

20.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

21.

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

Rohn, Jim

22.

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

Seneca

23.

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

Hegel, Georg

24.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

25.

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

Diderot, Denis

26.

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

Murdoch, Iris

27.

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

Brookner, Anita

28.

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

Gauguin, Paul

29.

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

Yeats, William Butler

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Burroughs, John

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

37.

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

Johnson, Samuel

38.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Camus, Albert

45.

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

46.

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.

Donne, John

47.

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

Pascal, Blaise

48.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

49.

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

50.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig