Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Voltaire

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

Edwards, Oliver

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

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

Rohn, Jim

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

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

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

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

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

10.

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

Descartes, Rene

11.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

12.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

13.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Quinet, Edgar

14.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

15.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

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

Berkeley, George

17.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

18.

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

Stevens, Wallace

19.

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

20.

Stein, Gertrude

21.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

22.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Dickens, Charles

23.

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

Pascal, Blaise

24.

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

Camus, Albert

25.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

26.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

27.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Cicero, Marcus T.

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.

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

30.

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

Murdoch, Iris

31.

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

Burroughs, John

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

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

Hegel, Georg

39.

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

40.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Russell, Bertrand

44.

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

Roux, Joseph

45.

Plato was a bore.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Murdoch, Iris

49.

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

Johnson, Samuel

50.

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