Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

- Roux, Joseph

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Carnegie, Dale

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

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Stevens, Wallace

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

Diogenes of Sinope

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

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

Seneca

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

11.

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

Murdoch, Iris

12.

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

Stevens, Wallace

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.

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

Voltaire

15.

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

Diderot, Denis

16.

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

17.

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

Yeats, William Butler

18.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

19.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Johnson, Samuel

23.

In it he proves that all things are true and states how the truths of all contradictions may be reconciled physically, such as for example that white is black and black is white; that one can be and not be at the same time; that there can be hills without valleys; that nothingness is something and that everything, which is, is not. But take note that he proves all these unheard-of paradoxes without any fallacious or sophistical reasoning.

Bergerac, Savinien Cyrano De

24.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

25.

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

26.

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

Roux, Joseph

27.

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

28.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

29.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

30.

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

James, William

31.

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

Zend, Robert

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

35.

As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.

Erasmus, Desiderius

36.

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

37.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

38.

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

39.

Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.

Whitehead, Alfred North

40.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

41.

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.

Hegel, Georg

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Camus, Albert

47.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

48.

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

Burroughs, John

49.

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

50.

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

Rohn, Jim