Philosopher Quotes - Page 34

• It is not science which leads to unbelief but rather ignorance. The ignorant man thinks he understands something provided that he sees it every day. The natural philosopher walks amid enigmas, always striving to understand and always half-understanding. He learns to believe what he does not understand, and that is a step on the road to faith.

  Jan Potocki

  Believe, Ignorance, Men

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• A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else.

  Mark Forsyth

  Differences, May, Poet

  Mark Forsyth (2013). “The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase”, p.15, Icon Books Ltd

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• Ask yourself whether you are happy', observed the philosopher John Stuart Mill, 'and you cease to be so.' At best, it would appear, happiness can only be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, not stared at directly.

  Oliver Burkeman

  Eye, Mills, Corners

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• By the respectable terms of the modern literary profession, novelists do not preach. And, in fact, there has probably not been a less respectable novelist among the irrefutably enduring writers of our time than Ayn Rand: philosopher queen of the best-seller lists in the forties and fifties, cult phenomenon and nationally declared threat to public morality in the sixties, guru to the Libertarians and to White House economic policy in the seventies, and a continuing exemplar or Wilde's tragic observation that more than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

  Claudia Roth

  Queens, White, House

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• And Numenius, the Pythagorean philosopher, expressly writes: 'For what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek.'

  Clement of Alexandria

  Plato, Writing, Greek

  Clement of Alexandria (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Clement of Alexandria (Annotated Edition)”, p.341, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The British philosopher Bertrand Russell said that philosophy went downhill after Democritus and did not recover until the Renaissance.

  Leon M. Lederman

  Philosophy, Renaissance, British

  Leon M. Lederman, Dick Teresi (1993). “The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question?”, p.61, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Theoretical scientists who probe the secrets of the universe and philosophers who seek answers to existence, as well as painters such as Paul Klee who find the thoughts of men of science compatible with art, influence me far more than most photographers.

  Wynn Bullock

  Photography, Art, Men

  Wynn Bullock, Barbara Bullock-Wilson (1984). “Wynn Bullock, photographing the nude: the beginnings of a quest for meaning”, Gibbs Smith

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• The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the building: posterity discovers it in the bricks with which he built and which are then often used again for better building: in the fact, that is to say, that building can be destroyed and nonetheless possess value as material.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, Lying, Believe

  "Beyond Hegel and Nietzsche: Philosophy, Culture, and Agency". Book by Elliot L. Jurist, 2000.

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• When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.

  John Cage

  Acting, Can Do, You Can Do It

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• Different Chinese philosophers, writing probably in 5-4 centuries B.C., presented some major ideas and a way of life that are nowadays known under the name of Taoism, the way of correspondence between man and the tendency or the course of natural world.

  Alan Watts

  Writing, Men, Names

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• Future generations may or may not judge Wittgenstein to be one of the great philosophers. Even if they do not, however, he is sure always to count as one of the great personalities of philosophy. From our perspective it is easy to mistake one for the other; which he is time will tell.

  A.C. Grayling

  Philosophy, Mistake, Perspective

  A. C. Grayling (1988). “Wittgenstein”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The true cook is the perfect blend, the only perfect blend, of artist and philosopher. He knows his worth: he holds in his palm the happiness of mankind, the welfare of generations yet unborn.

  Norman Douglas

  Food, Artist, Perfect

  Norman Douglas (1982). “South Wind”, p.312, Courier Corporation

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• Shouldn't I join the ranks of philosophers and merely make unsubstantiated claims about the wonders of human consciousness? Shouldn't I stop trying to do some science and keep my head down? Indeed not.

  Kevin Warwick

  Trying, Wonder, Consciousness

  "Feisty Fragments: For Philosophy". Book by Vincent F. Hendricks, 2004.

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• I feel that we are all philosophers, and that those who describe themselves as a 'philosopher' simply do not have a day job to go to.

  Kevin Warwick

  Jobs, Day Jobs, Feels

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I persist in preferring philosophers to rabbis priests imams ayatollahs and mullahs. Rather than trust their theological hocus-pocus I prefer to draw on alternatives to the dominant philosophical historiography: the laughers materialists radicals cynics hedonists atheists sensualists voluptuaries. They know that there is only one world and that promotion of an afterlife deprives us of the enjoyment and benefit of the only one there is. A genuinely deadly sin.

  Michel Onfray

  Atheist, Philosophical, Afterlife

  Michel Onfray, Jeremy Leggatt (2007). “Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam”, p.219, Arcade Publishing

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• The teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of letters, can only perform his work adequately if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority.

  Bertrand Russell

  Teacher, Artist, Creative

  "The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell".

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• All art preserves mysteries which aesthetic philosophers tackle in vain.

  Anthony Burgess

  Art, Mystery, Vain

  "A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English". Book by Anthony Burgess, October 1992.

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• Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self-inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.

  Deepak Chopra

  Philosophy, Creativity, Reflection

  "Exclusive: Deepak Chopra Explores the Evolution of God". Interview with Dan Schawbel, www.forbes.com. September 25, 2012.

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• Summer weather, like being in love,is a philosopher's stone which turns our ordinary days to gold. But not the whole day ... For it is never the whole day, never all our life which is transformed in any happiness, but only the exquisite moments.

  Nan Fairbrother

  Summer, Being In Love, Love Is

  Nan Fairbrother (1954). “An English Year”

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• All our contemporary philosophers perhaps without knowing it are looking through eyeglasses that Baruch Spinoza polished. Spinoza was a philosopher who earned his livelihood by grinding lenses.

  Heinrich Heine

  Eyeglasses, Knowing, Lenses

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• Cavendish was a great Man with extraordinary singularities-His voice was squeaking his manner nervous He was afraid of strangers & seemed when embarrassed to articulate with difficulty-He wore the costume of our grandfathers. Was enormously rich but made no use of his wealth... He Cavendish lived latterly the life of a solitary, came to the Club dinner & to the Royal Society: but received nobody at his home. He was acute sagacious & profound & I think the most accomplished British Philosopher of his time.

  Humphry Davy

  Home, Men, Thinking

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• Every philosophical thinker hails it [The Origin of Species] as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism.

  Thomas Huxley

  Philosophical, Gun, Hail

  "Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews".

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• For other great mathematicians or philosophers, he [Gauss] used the epithets magnus, or clarus, or clarissimus; for Newton alone he kept the prefix summus.

  W. W. Rouse Ball

  Science, Newton, Used

  W. W. Rouse Ball (2012). “A Short Account of the History of Mathematics”, p.352, Courier Corporation

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• Historically the most striking result of Kant's labors was the rapid separation of the thinkers of his own nation and, though less completely, of the world, into two parties;-the philosophers and the scientists.

  Lawrence Joseph Henderson

  Party, Science, Two

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• In England, philosophers are honoured, respected; they rise to public offices, they are buried with the kings... In France warrants are issued against them, they are persecuted, pelted with pastoral letters: Do we see that England is any the worse for it?

  John Dewey

  Kings, Office, Letters

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