Philosophy Quotes

I am a misanthrope, but exceedingly benevolent; I am very cranky, and am a super-idealist. ... I can digest philosophy better than food.

Alfred Nobel

...[T]he whole undertaking of philosophical inquiry requires a prior understanding of the conceptual system in which the undertaking is set. That is an empirical job for cognitive science and cognitive semantics. ... Unless this job is done, we will not know whether the answers philosophers give to their questions are a function of the conceptualization built into the questions themselves.

George Lakoff

All outdoors may be bedlam, provided there is no disturbance within.

Seneca

There is an easy way to measure our inner levels of abjectness and friendliness to ourselves: we should examine how well we response to noise.

Alain de Botton

What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.

Seneca

When we suspect that we are appropriate targets for hurt, it does not take much for us to believe that someone or something is out to hurt us

Alain de Botton

Humility is one of the best expressions of self respect.

Debasish Mridha

Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others.

Ayn Rand

Do not commit spiritual suicide through a passion for discussing metaphysical subtleties.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

So live. I'll be the nun for you. I am now.

Annie Dillard

The accusation of metaphysics has become in philosophy something like the accusation of being a security risk in the public service. I do not for my part know what is meant by the word 'metaphysics'. The only definition I have found that fits all cases is: 'a philosophical opinion not held by the present author'.

Bertrand Russell

To bracket form and finality out of one's investigations as far as reason allows is a matter of method, but to deny their reality altogether is a matter of metaphysics.

David Bentley Hart

Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man is fully and completely under mechanical laws.

P.D. Ouspensky

Man lives on earth not once, but three times: the first stage of his life is his continual sleep; the second, sleeping and waking by turns; the third, waking forever.

Gustav Fechner

To deny the necessity or value of metaphysics is to assert a metaphysical principle, just as to say a religion must be without dogmas is to assert a dogma.

Fulton J. Sheen

God is triune, and all reality is structured in terms of Him. A brief definition of the Trinity might be this: One God without division in a plurality of Persons, and three Persons without confusion in a unity of essence. God is not 'basically' One, with the individual Persons being derived from the oneness; nor is God 'basically' Three, with the unity of the Persons being secondary. God is One, and God is Three. There are not three Gods; there is only one God. Yet each of the Persons is Himself God — and They are distinct, individual Persons. But there is only one God. "To put it in more philosophical language, God’s unity (oneness) and diversity (threeness, individuality) are equally ultimate. God is 'basically' One and 'basically' Three at the same time. And the same goes for all of creation. Both unity and diversity are important – equally important. Neither aspect of reality has priority over the other.

David H. Chilton

Wisdom plus knowledge equals understanding.

Reid A. Ashbaucher

Heidegger is the philosopher to whom especially postmodernists chiefly appeal in their radical rejections of metaphysics and of any and every conception of the entirety of actuality, of Being as such and as a whole. To be sure, their appeals to Heidegger are as a rule extraordinarily superficial ones. These authors come nowhere near to providing adequate interpretations of or appropriations from Heid

Lorenz B. Puntel

The term 'Being' does not define that realm of entities which is uppermost when these are articulated conceptually according to genus and species: the 'universality' of Being 'transcends' any universality of genus.

Martin Heidegger

Notice that your judgments of what exists are the same kind of judgments you make about how to live your life. There aren't two kinds of things we do: judge what exists and decide what we want to do about it. Fundamentally, there is one kind of thing we do: live our lives. And we can reflect on this activity more or less abstractly.

Eric Kaplan

Jo knew nothing about philosophy or metaphysics of any sort, but a curious excitement, half pleasurable, half painful, came over her, as she listened with a sense of being turned adrift into time and space, like a young balloon out on a holiday.

Louisa May Alcott

In periods when shallow speculation is rife, one might think that metaphysics would shine forth, at least, by the brilliance of its modest reserve. But the very age that is unaware of the majesty of metaphysics, likewise overlooks its poverty. Its majesty? It is wisdom. Its poverty? It is human science.

Jacques Maritain

Everything in the seen world is a dim reflection or representation of the unseen world.

Dan Pedersen

Philosophy in its old form could exist only in the absence of engineering, but with engineering in existence and daily more active and far reaching, the old verbalistic philosophy and metaphysics have lost their reason to exist. They were no more able to understand the "production" of the universe and life than they are now able to understand or grapple with "production" as a means to provide a happier existence for humanity. They failed because their venerated method of "speculation" can not produce, and its place must be taken by mathematical thinking. Mathematical reasoning is displacing metaphysical reasoning. Engineering is driving verbalistic philosophy out of existence and humanity gains decidedly thereby. Only a few parasites and "speculators" will mourn the disappearance of their old companion "speculation." The world of producers -the predominating majority of human beings- will welcome a philosophy of ordered thought and production.

Alfred Korzybski

Philosophy is about everything when I say everything I mean both something and nothing. Something is what we can perceive and nothing is beyond our senses.

Mark D. Ekperi

And just as the same town, when looked at from different sides, appears quite different and is, as it were, multiplied in perspective, so also it happens that because of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were as many different universes, which are however but different perspective representations of a single universe form the different point of view of each monad.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

If God created everything, and if man is created in God's image, and if man can dream a fate greater than the one set out for him by God, could God dream a fate greater than his own?

Michael Anthony

With faith one attains and realises peace and harmony. With doubt one destroys and gains freedom to move ontowards.

Fazal Inayat-Khan

Finish the work, otherwise an unfinished work will finish you.

Amit Kalantri

CURTAIN CALLThe world is our stage and the final act can highlight or ruin a beautiful play

Kamil Ali

Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.

Ray Bradbury

When I was young, I forgot how to laugh in the cave of Trophonius; when I was older, I opened my eyes and beheld reality, at which I began to laugh, and since then, I have not stopped laughing. I saw that the meaning of life was to secure a livelihood, and that its goal was to attain a high position; that love’s rich dream was marriage with an heiress; that friendship’s blessing was help in financial difficulties; that wisdom was what the majority assumed it to be; that enthusiasm consisted in making a speech; that it was courage to risk the loss of ten dollars; that kindness consisted in saying, “You are welcome,” at the dinner table; that piety consisted in going to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.

Søren Kierkegaard

A rumbling volcano is like a pimple.You know that they're both going to explode,but you just don't know when.

Anthony T.Hincks

Spermicide' sort of rhymes with 'pesticide', yet you wouldn't put a load of DDT in you know where to kill you know what, now would you?

Anthony T.Hincks

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

Henry Ward Beecher

Be a philosopher but amid all your philosophy be still a man.

David Hume

The philosopher is Nature's pilot - and there you have our difference to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

George Bernard Shaw

For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently.

William Shakespeare

One's task is not to turn the world upside down but to do what is necessary at the given place and with a due consideration of reality.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

Sir Francis Bacon

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Ambrose Bierce

Queen of arts and daughter of heaven.

Edmund Burke

In philosophy it is not the attainment of the goal that matters it is the things that are met with by the way.

Havelock Ellis

Philosophy goes no further than probabilities and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.

James Froude

Whence? wither? why? how? - these questions cover all philosophy.

Joseph Joubert

There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

William Shakespeare

There was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently.

William Shakespeare

The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

George Bernard Shaw

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

Voltaire

Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the conflicts between men a search for their cause a condemnation of mere opinion .. . and the discovery of a standard of judgement.

Epictetus

Anything that comes easy comes wrong.

Josephine Tessier

To teach how to live with uncertainty and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can still do for those who study it.

Bertrand Russell

All philosophies if you ride them home are nonsense but some are greater nonsense than others.

Samuel Butler

It is easy to build a philosophy. It doesn't have to run.

Charles F. Kettering

I've developed a new philosophy - I only dread one day at a time.

Charles M. Schulz

A man of business may talk of philosophy a man who has none may practise it.

Alexander Pope

Philosophy - the purple bullfinch in the lilac tree.

T.S Eliot

Philosophy has a fine saying for everything - for Death it has an entire set.

Laurence Sterne

Three passions simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

Bertrand Russell

In North America there is the general belief that everything can be fixed that life can be fixed up. In Europe the view is that a lot can't be fixed up and that living properly is not necessarily a question of mastering the technology so much as learning to live gracefully within the constraints that the species invents.

Jonathan Miller

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