Quotes about philosophers and philosophy

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

Hegel, Georg on philosophers and philosophy   

"Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond."

Hegel, Georg on philosophers and philosophy
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"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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"I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds."

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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"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Johnson, Samuel on philosophers and philosophy   

"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

"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, Søren on philosophers and philosophy   

"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

"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. on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on philosophers and philosophy
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"When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers."

Lippmann, Walter on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Longworth, Alice Roosevelt on philosophers and philosophy   

"In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man."

Macaulay, Thomas B. on philosophers and philosophy   

"There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections."

Maistre, Joseph De on philosophers and philosophy   

"Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love."

Marx, Karl on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Marx, Karl on philosophers and philosophy   

"Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory -- the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have out paper allegories but ill comprehended."

Melville, Herman on philosophers and philosophy   

"Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself."

Mencken, H. L. on philosophers and philosophy
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"There is no record in history of a happy philosopher."

Mencken, H. L. on philosophers and philosophy   

"Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery."

Miller, Henry on philosophers and philosophy
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"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

"Philosophy is doubt."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Murdoch, Iris on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Murdoch, Iris on philosophers and philosophy   

"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

"Actual philosophers... are commanders and law-givers: they say thus it shall be!, it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical laborers, of all those who have subdued the past -- they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer. Their knowing is creating, their creating is a law giving, their will to truth is -- will to power. Are their such philosophers today? Have there been such philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers?"

Nietzsche, Friedrich on philosophers and philosophy   

"Plato was a bore."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on philosophers and philosophy   

"Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on philosophers and philosophy
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"To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher."

Pascal, Blaise on philosophers and philosophy
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"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Pinter, Harold on philosophers and philosophy   

"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

"Many talk like philosophers yet live like fools."

Proverb on philosophers and philosophy
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"Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot."

Quinet, Edgar on philosophers and philosophy   

"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 on philosophers and philosophy   

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

Rohn, Jim on philosophers and philosophy