Motivational Quotes

Philosophers and philosophy

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

Philosophers and philosophy Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Philosophers and philosophy

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

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

Rohn, Jim

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

Seneca

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

Descartes, Rene

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

Hegel, Georg

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Marx, Karl

10.

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

11.

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

Murdoch, Iris

12.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

13.

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

Edwards, Oliver

14.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

15.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

16.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

17.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

18.

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

19.

There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.

Mencken, H. L.

20.

Keep quiet and people will think you a philosopher.

21.

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

22.

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

Diderot, Denis

23.

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

24.

Philosophy is doubt.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

25.

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

Voltaire

26.

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

27.

Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools.

Proverb

28.

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

Burroughs, John

29.

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

30.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Stevens, Wallace

36.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North

37.

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

Pinter, Harold

38.

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

Stevens, Wallace

39.

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

Camus, Albert

40.

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

41.

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

Carnegie, Dale

42.

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

Berkeley, George

43.

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

Johnson, Samuel

44.

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

45.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Whitehead, Alfred North

46.

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

47.

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

Diogenes of Sinope

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

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

Zend, Robert