Philosopher Quotes - Page 30

• Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.

  Ray Bradbury

  Plato, Men, Blood

  67 Copy quote

• The spiritual experience of the philosopher is the nourishing soil of philosophy; that without it there is no philosophy; and that, even so, spiritual experience does not, or must not, enter into the intelligible texture of philosophy. The pulp of the fruit must consist of nothing but the truth.

  Jacques Maritain

  Spiritual, Philosophy, Doe

  Jacques Maritain (2015). “Existence and the Existent”, p.104, Paulist Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  William James

  Philosophy, Interesting, Perspective

  William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.487, Library of America

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome,or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die.

  Jacques Derrida

  Plato, Philosophical, Mean

  122 Copy quote

• If someone asks, ‘But what in the end is a philosopher?’ I would say ‘A philosopher is a human being who fights in theory.’

  Louis Althusser

  Fighting, Ends, Theory

  45 Copy quote

• The philosopher creates, he doesn't reflect.

  Gilles Deleuze

  22 Copy quote

• As a doctor I had no choice. As a philosopher I had too many.

  Hannibal

  Doctors, Choices

  53 Copy quote

• In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Two, Choices, Humanity

  8 Copy quote

• Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.

  William Carlos Williams

  Philosophy, Writing, Men

  William Carlos Williams, John C. Thirlwall (1957). “The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams”, p.219, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, Professor Cohen, how do I know that I exist? The keen old prof replied, And who is asking?

  Saul Bellow

  Asking, Students, Professors

  Saul Bellow (2008). “Humboldt's Gift”, Penguin Classics

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man may be the greatest philosopher in the world but a child in RELIGION. When a man has developed a high state of spirituality he can understand that the kingdom of heaven is within him.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Children, Men, Heaven

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.296, Manonmani Publishers

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• All philosophers should end their days at Pythia's feet. There is only one philosophy, that of unique moments.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Philosophy, Unique, Feet

  "The Book of Delusions". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1936.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• What a pity that 'nothingness' has been devalued by an abuse of it made by philosophers unworthy of it!

  Emile M. Cioran

  Abuse, Pity, Made

  4 Copy quote

• Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.

  Clive James

  Diaries, Narrative, Boring

  5 Copy quote

• Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Fun, Nice, Believe

  Sinclair Lewis (2015). “Babbitt”, p.62, Sheba Blake Publishing

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no opinion so stupid that it can't be expressed by some philosopher.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Stupid, Stupidity, Opinion

  4 Copy quote

• A philosopher always finds more grass to feed upon in the valleys of stupidity than on the arid heights of intelligence.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Stupidity, Valleys, Height

  6 Copy quote

• Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.

  Peter Medawar

  Philosophy, Science, Artist

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.13, Oxford University Press, USA

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Not a single one of the doctrines of Marx has ever been accepted by any economist or any philosopher. But what of it? It was necessary that Gaiseric should convince economists or philosophers that there were sound reasons why he should capture Rome. He and his followers wanted it, and they had the power to take it.

  Thomas Nixon Carver

  Rome, Reason Why, Sound

  4 Copy quote

• I shall no doubt be blamed by certain scientists, and, I am afraid, by some philosophers, for having taken serious account of the alleged facts which are investigated by Psychical Researchers. I am wholly impenitent about this. The scientists in question seem to me to confuse the Author of Nature with the Editor of Nature; or at any rate to suppose that there can be no productions of the former which would not be accepted for publication by the latter. And I see no reason to believe this.

  C. D. Broad

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Taken

  "The Mind and Its Place in Nature".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Mistake, Imagination, Flight

  David Hume (2015). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.463, David Hume

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Cynical, Ridiculous, Absurd

  7 Copy quote

• The centre of the universe and only rotates on its axis without going from east to west, is a very dangerous attitude and one calculated not only to arouse all Scholastic philosophers and theologians but also to injure our holy faith by contradicting the Scriptures.

  Robert Bellarmine

  Attitude, Axes, Scary

  20 Copy quote

• The Christian philosopher has a perfect right to the point of view and prephilosophical assumptions he brings to philosophic work; the fact that these are not widely shared outside the Christian or theistic community is interesting but fundamentally irrelevant.

  Alvin Plantinga

  Christian, Views, Perfect

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Song, Thinking, Arguing

  "The Cat is back" by Inayat Bunglawala, www.theguardian.com. November 2, 2006.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source