Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Seneca

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

The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food.

Reade, W. Winwood

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

Stevens, Wallace

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

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

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

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

10.

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

Camus, Albert

11.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Kant, Immanuel

12.

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

Burroughs, John

13.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

14.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

15.

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

Carnegie, Dale

16.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

17.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

18.

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

19.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

20.

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

Descartes, Rene

21.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

22.

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

Murdoch, Iris

23.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

24.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

25.

The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.

Pascal, Blaise

26.

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

Miller, Henry

27.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

28.

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

29.

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

Voltaire

30.

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

Roux, Joseph

31.

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

Russell, Bertrand

32.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

33.

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

Berkeley, George

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.

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

Diderot, Denis

36.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

37.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

38.

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

Stevens, Wallace

39.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

40.

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

41.

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

42.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

43.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

44.

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

45.

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

Marx, Karl

46.

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

47.

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

Brookner, Anita

48.

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

49.

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

Murdoch, Iris

50.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb