Philosopher Quotes - Page 24

• Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game.

  Octavio Paz

  Beauty, Art, Games

  Octavio Paz (1991). “On Poets and Others”, p.74, Arcade Publishing

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• My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries.

  Steven Pinker

  Opinion, Human Nature, Psychologist

  "A biological understanding of human nature". Edge Interview, www.edge.org. September 18, 2017.

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• The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists.

  Herbert Read

  Military, Artist, Civilization

  Sir Herbert Edward Read (1964). “Selected writings: poetry and criticism”

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

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Philosophical, Desire, Pleasure

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• One of the reasons my name is Rushdie is that my father was an admirer of Ibn Rush'd, the 12th century Arab philosopher known as Averroes in the West. In his time, he was making the non-literalist case for interpreting the Koran.

  Salman Rushdie

  Father, Names, West

  "Salman Rushdie: Inside the Mind of Jihadists". Interview with Nathan Gardels, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 25, 2011.

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• The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man.

  Marquis de Sade

  Philosophy, Moving, Men

  Marquis de Sade, David Coward (1999). “The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales”, p.1, Oxford Paperbacks

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• Decades ago, Gerhard Richter found a painterly philosopher's stone. Like Jackson Pollock before him, he discovered something that had been in painting all along, always overlooked or discounted.

  Jerry Saltz

  Stones, Painting, Found

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• Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.

  George Santayana

  Too Much, Fierce, Severe

  George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.18, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• The tendency to gather and to breed philosophers in universities does not belong to ages of free and humane reflection: it is scholastic and proper to the Middle Ages and to Germany.

  George Santayana

  Reflection, Age, Doe

  George Santayana (2015). “Character and Opinion in the United States”, p.21, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Believe, Literature

  "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms" by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Pennsylvania University Press, 1968.

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• Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Education, Depth, Literature

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

  Wallace Stevens

  Philosophy, Poet, Existence

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination”, p.56, Vintage

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• There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Literature, Should, Certain

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.183, Penguin

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• The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Simplicity, Motto, Natural

  Alfred North Whitehead (2015). “The Concept of Nature: Tarner Lectures”, p.104, Cambridge University Press

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• It is not meant that the artist, in arriving at truth, must follow the way of the scientist, or, in stating it, the way of the philosopher.

  George Edward Woodberry

  Artist, Arriving, Way

  George Edward Woodberry (1914). “Two Phases of Criticism, Historical and Aesthetic: Lectures Delivered on the Larwill Foundation of Kenyon College, May Seventh and Eighth, 1913”

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• God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has often been said by philosophers, that nature is the will of God. And I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Nature, Motherhood, Artist

  "Truth Against the World: Frank Lloyd Wright Speaks for an Organic Architecture". Book edited by Patrick J. Meehan, 1987.

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• The tendency of philosophers who know nothing of machinery is to talk of man as a mere mechanism, intending by this to imply that he is without purpose. This shows a lack of understanding of machines as well as of man.

  Arthur Young

  Men, Understanding, Purpose

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• Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher who celebrated the anguish of decision as a hallmark of responsibility, has no place in Silicon Valley.

  Evgeny Morozov

  Responsibility, Decision, Valleys

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• Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.

  Jonathan Swift

  Littles, Gulliver's Travels, Comparison

  Jonathan Swift (1826). “Gulliver's Travels”, p.103

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• The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.

  Edward Gibbon

  Religious, Reflection, People

  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ch. 2 (1776 - 1788)

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• Then a miracle occurred in the form of a plate of sandwiches. Geryon took three and buried his mouth in a delicious block of white bread filled with tomatoes and butter and salt. He thought about how delicious it was, how he liked slippery foods, how slipperiness can be of different kinds. I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided. Things good on the inside.

  Anne Carson

  Block, White, Miracle

  Anne Carson (1998). “Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse”, Knopf

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• This sort of thing has got to be stopped. Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Jobs, Landlord, Slums

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• Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosphorum. (There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.)

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Absurd, Said

  'De Divinatione' bk. 2, ch. 119

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• What's a philosopher?' said Brutha. Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head.

  Terry Pratchett

  Jobs, Voice, Enough

  "Small Gods". Book by Terry Pratchett, 1992.

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• It brings joy in sorrow, victory in battle, light to darkness, life to the dead. That is the power of the blood-red jewel which men honor with the name "The Philosopher's Stone.

  Hiromu Arakawa

  Men, Light, Blood

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