Philosopher Quotes - Page 33

• I have studied the enemy all my life. I have read the memoirs of his generals and his leaders. I have even read his philosophers and listened to his music. I have studied in detail the account of every damned one of his battles. I know exactly how he will react under any given set of circumstances. And he hasn't the slightest idea of what I'm going to do. So when the time comes, I'm going to whip the hell out of him.

  George S. Patton

  Life, Ideas, Leader

  War As I Knew It (1947).

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• While most of those who hold that the whole heaven is finite say that the earth lies at the center, the philosophers of Italy, the so-called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary. They say that in the middle there is fire, and that the earth is one of the stars, and by its circular motion round the center produces night and day.

  Aristotle

  Stars, Lying, Night

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• Athletes have studied how to leap and how to survive the leap some of the time and return to the ground. They don't always do it well. But they are our philosophers of actual moments and the body and soul in them, and of our maneuvers in our emergencies and longings.

  Harold Brodkey

  Health, Athlete, Exercise

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• REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Dream, Philosophy, Reality

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.177, 谷月社

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• Here we are at the very core of the thesis we wish to defend in the present essay: reverie is under the sign of the anima. When the reverie is truly profound, the being who comes to dream within us is our anima. For a philosopher who takes his inspiration from phenomenology, a reverie on reverie is very exactly a phenomenology of the anima, and it is by coordinating reveries on reverie that he hopes to constitute a "Poetics of reverie". In other words, the poetics of reverie is a poetics of the anima.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Dream, Inspiration, Profound

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• We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central.

  Iris Murdoch

  Love, Philosophy, Needs

  Iris Murdoch (1999). “Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature”, p.337, Penguin

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• A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Love, Business, Philosophy

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.300, Penguin

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• Let no Christian therefore, whether philosopher or theologian, embrace eagerly and lightly whatever novelty happens to be thought up from day to day, but rather let him weigh it with painstaking care and a balanced judgment, lest he lose or corrupt the truth he already has, with grave danger and damage to his faith.

  Pope Pius XII

  Christian, Powerful, Catholic

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• Some philosophers see into themselves, and some into their times; still others forge an alliance with the future.

  David Berlinski

  Time, Future, Alliances

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• Like the alchemist of old, for ever searching for the philosopher's stone, the analyst to-day never stops looking for stronger moves to prevent the defender from establishing equality.

  Savielly Tartakower

  Moving, Alchemist, Stronger

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• The man of science, the artist, the philosopher are attached to their nations as much as the day-laborer and the merchant.

  Julien Benda

  Artist, Men, He Man

  Julien Benda (2011). “The Treason of the Intellectuals”, p.182, Transaction Publishers

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• It is curious to reflect, for example, upon the remarkable legend of the Philosopher's Stone, one of the oldest and most universal beliefs, the origin of which, however far back we penetrate into the records of the past, we do not probably trace its real source.

  Frederick Soddy

  Real, Past, Example

  Frederick Soddy (2004). “The Interpretation of Radium and the Structure of the Atom”, p.182, Courier Corporation

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• I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker's questions to become comprehensible.

  Karl Jaspers

  Reality, Past, Littles

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• The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Struggle, Adversity, Men

  Oliver Goldsmith (1816). “The Vicar of Wakefield”, p.176

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• A good half of the effort of understanding what the Indian philosophers were after - and their subtleties make most of the great European philosophers look like schoolboys.

  T. S. Eliot

  Philosophy, Effort, Understanding

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• The classifications made by philosophers and psychologists are like trying to classify clouds by their shape.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Clouds, Trying, Shapes

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• Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor.

  Will Self

  Philosophy, Writing, Creativity

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• The man who enters his wife's dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Wife, Rooms

  Honore De Balzac (2005). “The Physiology of Marriage and Pierre Grassou”, p.60, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on philosophers, but they have not been very kind to me... I have been variously called nominalist, an instrumentalist, a positivist, a realist, and several other ists. The technique seems refutation by denigration: If you can attach a label to my approach, you don't have to say what is wrong with it... I am sure that Einstein, Heisenberg and Dirac didn't worry about whether they were realists or instrumentalists.

  Stephen Hawking

  Science, Worry, Technique

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• An old philosopher said to Monsieur Coignard, a Reverend Father: 'You are a pig!' To which Abad Coignard answered: 'You flatter me, sir. But unfortunately, I'm only a man.'

  Anatole France

  Father, Animal, Men

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• A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.

  Leszek Kolakowski

  Reading, Mind, Modern

  "Metaphysical Horror". Book by Leszek Kołakowski, 1988.

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• The only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.

  Christopher McDougall

  Way, Conquer, Born To Run

  Christopher McDougall (2010). “Born to Run: The hidden tribe, the ultra-runners, and the greatest race the world has never seen”, p.125, Profile Books

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• The Prayer of Examine produces within us the priceless grace of self-knowledge. I wish I could adequately explain to you how great a grace this truly is. Unfortunately, contemporary men and women simply do not value self-knowledge in the same way that all preceding generations have. For us technocratic knowledge reigns supreme. Even when we pursue self-knowledge, we all too often reduce it to a hedonistic search for personal peace and prosperity. How poor we are! Even the pagan philosophers were wiser than this generation. They knew that an unexamined life was not worth living.

  Richard J. Foster

  Prayer, Men, Self

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• There is a beauty in discovery. There is mathematics in music, a kinship of science and poetry in the description of nature, and exquisite form in a molecule. Attempts to place different disciplines in different camps are revealed as artificial in the face of the unity of knowledge. All literate men are sustained by the philosopher, the historian, the political analyst, the economist, the scientist, the poet, the artisan and the musician.

  Glenn T. Seaborg

  Men, Discovery, Discipline

  "Biographical Memoirs" edited by Darleane C. Hoffman, (p. 252), 2000.

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• A couturier must be an architect for design, a sculptor for shape, a painter for color, a musician for harmony, and a philosopher for temperance.

  Cristobal Balenciaga

  Color, Design, Musician

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