Philosopher Quotes - Page 35

• It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.

  Albert Einstein

  Men, Poor, He Man

  Albert Einstein (2016). “The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It”, p.116, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession.

  Lionel Trilling

  Science, Class, Names

  Lionel Trilling, Leon Wieseltier (2009). “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays”, p.425, Northwestern University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• People complain that our generation has no philosophers. They are wrong. They now sit in another faculty. Their names are Max Planck and Albert Einstein. Upon appointment as the first president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, Berlin, formed for the advancement of science.

  Adolf von Harnack

  Our Generation, Names, People

  16 Copy quote

• Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of mathematicians, which has changed little from Pythagoras to our day.

  Gian-Carlo Rota

  Science, Littles, Strange

  8 Copy quote

• Since the princes take the Earth for their own, it's fair that the philosophers reserve the sky for themselves and rule there, but they should never permit the entry of others.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Sky, Earth, Permit

  7 Copy quote

• Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Science, Sheep, Heaven

  16 Copy quote

• What is a good definition? For the philosopher or the scientist, it is a definition which applies to all the objects to be defined, and applies only to them; it is that which satisfies the rules of logic. But in education it is not that; it is one that can be understood by the pupils.

  Henri Poincare

  Science, Understanding, Definitions

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.730, Modern Library

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Zoological taxonomists in general are inclined to be practical workers rather than philosophers, if only because they face such an unending task that they are not encouraged to sit back and philosophize.

  Richard E. Blackwelder

  Tasks, Faces, Unending

  4 Copy quote

• Look not for refuge to anyone beside yourself. Heed fast to the truth as a lamp.

  Gautama Buddha

  Lamps, Looks, Refuge

  5 Copy quote

• Wisdom, humanity & courage, these three are universal virtues. The way by which they are practiced are one.

  Confucius

  Humanity, Three, Way

  13 Copy quote

• Just as it is agreed that we all wish to be happy, so it is that we all wish to be wise, since no one without wisdom is happy.

  Saint Augustine

  Wise, Wish, Being Wise

  14 Copy quote

• The mind is a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearence; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.

  David Hume

  Perception, Mind, Kind

  David Hume (1874). “A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning Into Moral Subjects; and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, p.534

  51 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

  Immanuel Kant

  Philosophy, Knowing, Limits

  Immanuel Kant (1963). “Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We should be surprised that a matter that generally plays such an important part in the life of man has hitherto been almost entirely disregarded by philosophers, and lies before us as raw and untreated material.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Lying, Men, Play

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “The World as Will and Representation”, p.532, Courier Corporation

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• All that philosophers have handled for millennia has been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has ever escaped from their hands alive.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Hands, Alive, Existential

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1996). “The Vision of Nietzsche”, Element Books Limited

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Development of Western science is based on two great achievements: the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during the Renaissance). In my opinion, one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Discovery, Two

  Letter to J.S. Switzer on April 23, 1953. "The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry". Book by H. Floris Cohen, p. 234, 1994.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.

  A.J. Ayer

  Past, Superstitions, Way

  27 Copy quote

• When there is no more separation between 'this' and 'that,' it is called the still-point of the Tao. At the still point in the center of the circle one can see the infinite in all things.

  Zhuangzi

  Circles, Taoism, Spirituality

  Zhuangzi (1974). “Chuang tsu: Inner chapters”, Vintage Books USA

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• But what exceeds all wonders, I have discovered four new planets and observed their proper and particular motions, different among themselves and from the motions of all the other stars; and these new planets move about another very large star [Jupiter] like Venus and Mercury, and perchance the other known planets, move about the Sun. As soon as this tract, which I shall send to all the philosophers and mathematicians as an announcement, is finished, I shall send a copy to the Most Serene Grand Duke, together with an excellent spyglass, so that he can verify all these truths.

  Galileo Galilei

  Stars, Moving, Science

  "Sidereus Nuncius, Or The Sidereal Messenger". Book by Galileo Galilei, March 13, 1610.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• The philosopher says think your way out. The sensualist says play your way out but none of it works.

  Billy Graham

  Thinking, Play, Choices

  4 Copy quote

• Intelligence may indeed be a benign influence creating isolated groups of philosopher-kings far apart in the heavens... On the other hand, intelligence may be a cancer of purposeless technological exploitation, sweeping across a galaxy as irresistibly as it has swept across our own planet.

  Freeman Dyson

  Kings, Cancer, Hands

  4 Copy quote

• Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

  Bill Watterson

  Meaningful, Jobs, Book

  "Some thoughts on the real world by one who glimpsed it and fled". Bill Watterson's commencement speech at the Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, www.graduationwisdom.com. May 20, 1990.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• At the very time that philosophers of the most enterprising benevolence were founding in Greece those institutions which have rendered it the wonder and luminary of the world, am I required to believe that the weak and wicked king of an obscure and barbarous nation, a murderer, a traitor and a tyrant, was the man after God's own heart?

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Atheist, Kings, Believe

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Roger Ingpen, Walter Edwin Peck (1965). “Complete Works: Newly Edited by Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals and philosophers have all died of gout.

  Thomas Sydenham

  Wise, Kings, Simple

  Thomas Sydenham, Robert Gordon Latham (1850). “The works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D.”, p.129

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Who lives as a citizen, may write as a philosopher - but write as a philosopher, it is to teach materialism!

  Julien Offray de La Mettrie

  Writing, Citizens, May

  10 Copy quote