Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

- Proverb

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

Stevens, Wallace

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.

Maistre, Joseph De

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

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

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

Burroughs, John

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

Gauguin, Paul

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

10.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

11.

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

12.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

17.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

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

Carnegie, Dale

19.

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

Pascal, Blaise

20.

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

21.

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

Descartes, Rene

22.

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

Zend, Robert

23.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

24.

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

Voltaire

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Diderot, Denis

30.

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

31.

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

Stevens, Wallace

32.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

33.

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

34.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

35.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

36.

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

Yeats, William Butler

37.

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

38.

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

Murdoch, Iris

39.

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

40.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

41.

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

Johnson, Samuel

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

46.

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

Seneca

47.

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