Philosopher famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.
-- A.J. Ayer -
There's no precedent for women philosophers and there's no precedence for most of the things I did.
-- Agnes Denes -
In my view, only those who have had the courage to work through Lacan's anti-philosophy without faltering deserve to be called 'contemporary philosophers'.
-- Alain Badiou -
Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
-- Alan Watts -
Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments.
-- Albert Camus -
For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
-- Aldous Huxley -
And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend.
-- Alexander Pope -
It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.
-- Alfred Korzybski -
The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.
-- Alfred North Whitehead -
The facile economic and psychological debunking of the theoretical life cannot do away with its irreducible beauties.
-- Allan Bloom -
Professors of Greek forget or are unaware that Thomas Aquinas, who did not know Greek, was a better interpreter of Aristotle than any of them have proved to be, not only because he was smarter but because he took Aristotle more seriously.
-- Allan Bloom -
Alvin Plantinga is arguably the greatest philosopher of the last century.
-- Alvin Plantinga -
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;" as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust." "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.
-- Andre Maurois -
Philosophers say man forms himself in dialogue.
-- Anne Carson -
All art preserves mysteries which aesthetic philosophers tackle in vain.
-- Anthony Burgess -
Don't call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease.
-- Anthony Daniels -
No philosopher was ever apathetic. If there is no love, it is not philosophy.
-- Anthony Marais -
The great philosophers are poets who believe in the reality of their poems.
-- Antonio Machado -
The difference between a poet and a philosopher is that the poet sees logically and describes basically the beauty whereas the philosopher defines the basics and shows the beauty of logics.
-- Anuj -
It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.
-- Ariel Durant -
Those who never philosophized until they met with disappointments, have mostly become disappointed philosophers
-- Arthur Helps -
A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
An army of philosophers would not be sufficient to change the nature of error and to make it truth.
-- Averroes -
All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
-- Baruch Spinoza -
Philosophers and common heathen believed one God, to whom all things were referred; but under this God they worshipped many inferior and subservient gods.
-- Benjamin Stillingfleet -
Les vrais philosophes sont comme les e le phants, qui en marchant ne posent jamais le second pied a'  terre que le premier ne soit bien affermi. True philosophers are like elephants, who when walking never placetheir second footontheground untilthefirst is steady.
-- Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle -
Since the princes take the Earth for their own, it's fair that the philosophers reserve the sky for themselves and rule there, but they should never permit the entry of others.
-- Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle -
To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.
-- Blaise Pascal -
Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. I will not forget thy word. Amen.
-- Blaise Pascal -
I keep reverting (to Duke Ellington), he to me is the greatest ever and my favorite jazz philosopher, as such.
-- Cannonball Adderley -
When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss -
You can argue with a philosopher, but you can’t argue with a good song. And I think I’ve got a few good songs.
-- Cat Stevens -
Pure draughtsmen are philosophers and dialecticians. Colourists are epic poets.
-- Charles Baudelaire -
The only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.
-- Christopher McDougall -
Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.
-- Clive James -
Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.
-- Corliss Lamont -
We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer.
-- Criss Jami -
To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told...and have a sense of humor doing it.
-- Criss Jami -
The technology [semiconductors] which has transformed practical existence is largely an application of what was discovered by these allegedly irresponsible [natural] philosophers.
-- Cyril Norman Hinshelwood -
There are more riddles in a stone than in a philosopher's head
-- Damon Knight -
Some philosophers see into themselves, and some into their times; still others forge an alliance with the future.
-- David Berlinski -
Anyway, there is a lot of really interesting work going on in the neuroscience and psychology of consciousness, and I would love to see philosophers become more closely involved with this.
-- David Chalmers -
Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.
-- David Hume -
When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.
-- Diogenes -
Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.
-- Diogenes -
You beat the liver out of a goose to get a pâté; you pound the muscles of a man's cardia to get a philosopher.
-- Djuna Barnes -
In our corrupted state, common weaknesses and defects contribute more towards the reconciling us to one another than all the precepts of the philosophers and divines.
-- E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax -
I've always argued that it is just as desirable, just as possible, to have philosopher plumbers as philosopher kings.
-- Edith Green -
He who esteems trifles for themselves is a trifler; he who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton -
There is a famous formula, perhaps the most compact and famous of all formulas - developed by Euler from a discovery of de Moivre: e^(i pi) + 1 = 0... It appeals equally to the mystic, the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician.
-- Edward Kasner -
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.
-- Elias Canetti -
Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.
-- Emile M. Cioran -
Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.
-- Epicurus -
A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject.
-- Ernest Gellner -
But, after all, the sciences have made progress, because philosophers have applied themselves with more attention to observe, and have communicated to their language that precision and accuracy which they have employed in their observations: In correcting their language they reason better.
-- Etienne Bonnot de Condillac -
Some great poet or philosopher once said that " he who goes to nature for comfort must go to her empty handed " , and I think he was right.
-- Flora Thompson -
When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright -
Seneca brings vividly before us a picture of the various scholars assembled in a school of the philosophers.
-- Frederic Farrar -
If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers.
-- Frederick The Great -
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche -
If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg -
The love of truth, virtue, and the happiness of mankind are specious pretexts, but not the inward principles that set divines at work; else why should they affect to abuse human reason, to disparage natural religion, to traduce the philosophers as they universally do?
-- George Berkeley -
love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.
-- George Santayana -
At best, the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself, or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves in the same boat.
-- George Santayana -
The Democrats believe they need more of your money to spend because they can spend it better than you can. But you know, sometimes philosophers don't act.
-- George W. Bush -
The philosopher is a person who refuses no pleasures which do not produce greater sorrows, and who knows how to create new ones.
-- Giacomo Casanova -
I have lived as a philosopher and die as a Christian.
-- Giacomo Casanova -
Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of mathematicians, which has changed little from Pythagoras to our day.
-- Gian-Carlo Rota -
The philosopher creates, he doesn't reflect.
-- Gilles Deleuze -
Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.
-- Gottlob Frege -
As a doctor I had no choice. As a philosopher I had too many.
-- Hannibal -
It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibniz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers.
-- Hans Reichenbach -
Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe -
As a philosopher, I'm not obliged to explore every unknown wilderness.
-- Harry Frankfurt -
A philosopher is aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel -
What is a good definition? For the philosopher or the scientist, it is a definition which applies to all the objects to be defined, and applies only to them; it is that which satisfies the rules of logic. But in education it is not that; it is one that can be understood by the pupils.
-- Henri Poincare -
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
-- Herman Melville -
To understand a philosopher requires a philosopher.
-- Horace Bushnell -
I am not primarily an entrepreneurial businessman. I'm primarily a playboy philosopher.
-- Hugh Hefner -
Many modern philosophers claim that probability is relation between an hypothesis and the evidence for it.
-- Ian Hacking -
Einstein's results again turned the tables and now very few philosophers or scientists still think that scientific knowledge is, or can be, proven knowledge.
-- Imre Lakatos -
Although according to certain philosophers it is quite difficult to distinguish the jester from the melancholic, life itself being a comic drama or a dramatic comedy.
-- Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont -
I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.
-- Jack Kevorkian -
Why is it the philosopher who is expected to be easier and not some scientist who is even more inaccessible?
-- Jacques Derrida -
These critics organize and practice in my case a sort of obsessive personality cult which philosophers should know how to question and above all, to moderate.
-- Jacques Derrida -
The philosopher says that God's knowledge is the measure of things, and that things are the measure of man's knowledge.
-- Jacques Maritain -
A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me.
-- Jacques Maritain -
The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher.
-- Jacques Maritain -
One learns more metaphysics from a single temptation than from all the philosophers.
-- James Russell Lowell -
Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune.
-- James Weldon Johnson -
If Socrates died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ died like a God.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -
Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
