Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

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

Pinter, Harold

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

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

Hegel, Georg

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

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

Murdoch, Iris

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

Roux, Joseph

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

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

10.

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

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.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

13.

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

14.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

15.

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

16.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

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

Burroughs, John

18.

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

19.

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

Stevens, Wallace

20.

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

Yeats, William Butler

21.

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

22.

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

23.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

24.

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

Brookner, Anita

25.

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

Camus, Albert

26.

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

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

27.

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

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.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

30.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

31.

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

Edwards, Oliver

32.

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

Descartes, Rene

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

37.

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

Miller, Henry

38.

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

Zend, Robert

39.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

40.

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

41.

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

42.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

43.

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

44.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

45.

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

Marx, Karl

46.

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

James, William

47.

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