Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Edwards, Oliver

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

If He Tom Sawyer had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Twain, Mark

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

Diogenes of Sinope

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

Brookner, Anita

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

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

Descartes, Rene

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

Miller, Henry

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Diderot, Denis

14.

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

Murdoch, Iris

15.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

16.

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

Rohn, Jim

17.

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

Marx, Karl

18.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

19.

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

Stevens, Wallace

20.

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

Voltaire

21.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

22.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

23.

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

Pinter, Harold

24.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Carnegie, Dale

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Yeats, William Butler

35.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

36.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

37.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

38.

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

Gauguin, Paul

39.

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

Hegel, Georg

40.

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

41.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

42.

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

Camus, Albert

43.

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

James, William

44.

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

Berkeley, George

45.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

46.

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

Stevens, Wallace

47.

If you set your heart upon philosophy, you must straightway prepare yourself to be laughed at and mocked by many who will say Behold a philosopher arisen among us! or How came you by that brow of scorn? But do you cherish no scorn, but hold to those things which seem to you the best, as one set by God in that place. Remember too, that if you abide in those ways, those who first mocked you, the same shall afterwards reverence you; but if you yield to them, you will be laughed at twice as much as before.

Epictetus

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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