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

James, William on philosophers and philosophy
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"Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits."

James, William on philosophers and philosophy
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"Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures."

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand on philosophers and philosophy   

"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 on philosophers and philosophy
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"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 on philosophers and philosophy
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"The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful."

Ayer, Sir Alfred Jules on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Berkeley, George on philosophers and philosophy
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"A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing."

Bierce, Ambrose on philosophers and philosophy
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"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."

Bierce, Ambrose on philosophers and philosophy
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"Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society."

Brookner, Anita on philosophers and philosophy
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"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 on philosophers and philosophy
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"All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others."

Butler, Samuel on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Camus, Albert on philosophers and philosophy
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"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on philosophers and philosophy   

"Where the criminals cover their crimes by making them legal. [On Washington D. C.]"

Dane, Frank on life   

"All that a city will ever allow you is an angle on it -- an oblique, indirect sample of what it contains, or what passes through it; a point of view."

Conrad, Peter on life   

"As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means."

Camus, Albert on life   

"What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness."

Brodsky, Joseph on life   

"Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and, in this, hasn't changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman."

Berger, John on life
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"Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night."

Brooke, Rupert on life
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"I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work."

Douglas, Michael on life   

"There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home."

Eisenhower, Dwight D. on life   

"I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday."

Fields, W. C. on life   

"Washington is a city of people doing badly what should not be done at all."

Gurney, Robert on life   

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast."

Hemingway, Ernest on life   

"In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you're told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is."

Hoggart, Simon on life   

"What else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?"

Henry, O. on life   

"There is a time of life somewhere between the sullen fugues of adolescence and the retrenchments of middle age when human nature becomes so absolutely absorbing one wants to be in the city constantly, even at the height of summer."

Hoagland, Edward on life   

"The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi."

Allen, Fred A. on life   

"The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it."

Baudelaire, Charles on life   

"The cities of the world are concentric, isomorphic, synchronic. Only one exists and you are always in the same one. It's the effect of their permanent revolution, their intense circulation, their instantaneous magnetism."

Baudrillard, Jean on life   

"Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance -- nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city -- as one loses oneself in a forest -- that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest."

Benjamin, Walter on life
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"Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent."

Baldwin, James on writers and writing
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"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit."

Bach, Richard on writers and writing
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"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about."

Auden, W. H. on writers and writing
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"If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster."

Asimov, Isaac on writers and writing
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"To write well, express yourself like common people, but think like a wise man. Or, think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do."

Aristotle on writers and writing
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"It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane."

Anderson, Margaret on writers and writing
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