Philosopher Quotes - Page 38

• He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Kings, Philosophy, Thinking

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1971). “The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau”

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• The essayist . . . can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast.

  E. B. White

  Philosophy, Devil, Matter

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.215, Cornell University Press

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• I see the beard and cloak, but I don't yet see a philosopher. -Video barbam et pallium; philosophum nondum video

  Aulus Gellius

  Philosophy, Video, Beard

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• There may have been somewhere, as a few eighteenth-century philosophers dreamed, a group of peaceful men who got together one evening after work and drew up a Social Contract to form the state. But nobody has been able to find an actual record of it. Practically all the governments whose origins are historically established were the result of conquest-of one tribe by another, one city by another, one people by another. Of course there have been constitutional conventions, but they merely changed the working rules of governments already in being.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Peace, Men, Cities

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• I wish, my dear Kepler, that we could have a good laugh together at the extraordinary stupidity of the mob. What do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or the Moon or my glass [telescope].

  Galileo Galilei

  Science, Thinking, Moon

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• States will never be happy until
  rulers become philosophers or
  philosophers become rulers.

  Plato

  States, Rulers

  Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Aristotle (2012). “The Modern Library Collection of Greek and Roman Philosophy 3-Book Bundle: Meditations; Selected Dialogues of Plato; The Basic Works of Aristotle”, p.15, Modern Library

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• Al-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out al-Ghazali's Ash?arite theology with unusual clarity and provides important background for such well-known works as his autobiographical Deliverance from Error and his attack on Avicenna in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. This first English-language translation, with notes that bring out the argumentation and background of the work, is thus very much to be welcomed.

  Peter Adamson

  Philosophical, Errors, Islam

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• In PLATO AT THE GOOGLEPLEX, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein set out to showcase, in sometimes startling ways, the continuing relevance of a classic philosopher. But what's remarkable is that she actually brings off this tour de force with both madcap brilliance and commanding authority.

  Michael Dirda

  Plato, Way, Classic

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• I've argued that many of what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In chimpanzees and other animals, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores.

  Frans de Waal

  Dog, Animal, Empathy

  "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist" by Natalie Angier, partners.nytimes.com. January 14, 2001.

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• And we daily in our experiments electrise bodies plus or minus, as we think proper. [These terms we may use till your Philosophers give us better.] To electrise plus or minus, no more needs to be known than this, that the parts of the Tube or Sphere, that are rubb'd, do, in the Instant of Friction, attract the Electrical Fire, and therefore take it from the Thin rubbing; the same parts immediately, as the Friction upon them ceases, are disposed to give the fire they have received, to any Body that has less.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Science, Thinking, Fire

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• Even if a king defeats his enemy in battle, that still doesn't settle anything. There are other, less numerous armies of philosophers and scientists, and their contests determine the true triumph or defeat of nations.
  One scholar is matched with another; one creative mind with another; and one judicious temperament with his counterpart. A victory won on that field counts for three won by force of arms.

  Cyrano de Bergerac

  Kings, Army, Creative

  "The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon". Book by Cyrano de Bergerac, 1657.

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• To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man's, into the world, as it is God's.

  Abraham Cowley

  Men, Cities, World

  Abraham Cowley, Samuel Johnson (1822). “The Poems of Abraham Cowley ...”

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• A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?'

  Roger Scruton

  Risk, Retorts, Interpretation

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• The fact is, every thinker, every philosopher, the moment he is forced to abandon his one-sided intellectual occupation by practical necessity, immediately returns to the general point of view of mankind.

  Ernst Mach

  Views, Intellectual, Occupation

  Ernst Mach (1959). “The Analysis of Sensations: And the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical”

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• I think philosophers can do things akin to theoretical scientists, in that, having read about empirical data, they too can think of what hypotheses and theories might account for that data. So there's a continuity between philosophy and science in that way.

  Robert Nozick

  Philosophy, Thinking, Data

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• The scientists often have more unfettered imaginations than current philosophers do. Relativity theory came as a complete surprise to philosophers, and so did quantum mechanics, and so did other things.

  Robert Nozick

  Imagination, Surprise, Scientist

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• The philosopher cannot seriously put to himself questions that his civilization has not lived.

  William Barrett

  Civilization

  William Barrett (2011). “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy”, p.20, Anchor

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• Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.

  Epicurus

  Philosophy, Men, Medicine

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• But Adam Smith was a philosopher as well as well as an economist, famous in his time as much for his Theory of Moral Sentiments as for The Wealth of Nations. And as he understood so well, society is more than the sum of its individual parts.

  Paul Ormerod

  Moral, Wealth, Individual

  "The Death of Economics". Book by Paul Ormerod, 1994.

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• I also realized that the philosophers, far from ridding me of my vain doubts, only multiplied the doubts that tormented me and failed to remove any one of them. So I chose another guide and said, Let me follow the Inner Light; it will not lead me so far astray as others have done, or if it does it will be my own fault, and I shall not go so far wrong if I follow my own illusions as if I trusted to their deceits.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Philosophy, Light, Doubt

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1979). “The indispensable Rousseau”, Quartet Books (UK)

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• APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. "The Mad Philosopher," 1697

  Ambrose Bierce

  Wine, Yield, Mad

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2356, Delphi Classics

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• When they can't win a debate (can they ever?), leftists deploy what the late novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand called the argument from intimidation. Instead of trying to refute the other side, they label their opponents' position evil, attribute sinister motives to its adherents, and charge that its proponents are encouraging violence.

  Don Feder

  Winning, Evil, Trying

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• "When we do not know what harbor we are making for," the Roman philosopher Seneca wrote, "no wind is the right wind." Persons have vision only when they have a dream that drives them on.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Dream, Wind, Goal

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• Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.

  James Anthony Froude

  Philosophy, Doubt, Probability

  Short Studies on Great Subjects Calvinism (p. 51)

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• The proof that a philosopher does not know what he is talking about is apt to sadden his followers before it reacts on himself.

  Henry Adams

  Talking, Doe, Followers

  Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.129, Booklassic

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