Philosopher Quotes - Page 39

• In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Plato, Philosophy, Science

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• A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Scholar, Great Philosophers

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1889). “Early and miscellaneous letters”

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• Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, Science, Stage

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.48, Penguin

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• A married philosopher belongs to comedy.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Comedy, Married

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Keith Ansell-Pearson (1994). “Nietzsche: 'On the Genealogy of Morality' and Other Writings”, p.81, Cambridge University Press

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• Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Science, Men, Poet

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.77, BookBaby

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• In our corrupted state, common weaknesses and defects contribute more towards the reconciling us to one another than all the precepts of the philosophers and divines.

  E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

  Perfect, Weakness, Common

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• The philosophers are wrong: it is not words that kill, it is silence.

  Elie Wiesel

  Silence

  Elie Wiesel (2013). “The Testament”, p.151, Souvenir Press

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• It is a proof of philosophical mediocrity, today, to look for a philosophy.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Looks

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• The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophic study.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Philosophy, Firsts, Study

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• When I first collected these authorities, I was desirous that every quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration of a word; I therefore extracted from philosophers principles of science; from historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful descriptions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Beautiful, Illustration, Firsts

  Samuel Johnson (2006). “A Dictionary of the English Language: an Anthology: an Anthology”, p.101, Penguin UK

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• The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. It is the philosopher coming back from the banquet and the wine to a cup of water and a crust of bread.

  John Burroughs

  Heart, Wine, Winter

  John Burroughs (2012). “In the Catskills Selections from the Writings of John Burroughs”, p.15, tredition

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• While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?

  Thomas Jefferson

  Plato, Philosophy, Science

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States”, p.248

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• Professors of Greek forget or are unaware that Thomas Aquinas, who did not know Greek, was a better interpreter of Aristotle than any of them have proved to be, not only because he was smarter but because he took Aristotle more seriously.

  Allan Bloom

  Greek, Forget, Professors

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• The facile economic and psychological debunking of the theoretical life cannot do away with its irreducible beauties.

  Allan Bloom

  Economic, Psychological, Theoretical

  Allan Bloom (2008). “Closing of the American Mind”, p.245, Simon and Schuster

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• The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short-cut answer.

  Margaret Mead

  Cutting, Science, Giving

  Margaret Mead (1973). “Coming of Age in Samoa”

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• Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.

  Paul Bloom

  Men, Animal, Sticks

  Paul Bloom (2011). “How Pleasure Works: Why we like what we like”, p.52, Random House

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• The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.

  Jonathan Swift

  Differences, Mind, World

  Jonathan Swift (1856). “The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author”, p.285

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• Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.

  Laurence Sterne

  Philosophy, Fine

  Laurence Sterne (1996). “Tristram Shandy”, p.248, Wordsworth Editions

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• Let no young man delay the study of philosophy, and let no old man become weary of it; for it is never too early nor too late to care for the well-being of the soul.

  Epicurus

  Philosophy, Men, Soul

  Epicurus (1964). “Letters: Principles Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings Translated, with an Introd. and Notes, by Russel M. Geor. Indianapolis Merrill”

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• Women make us poets, children make us philosophers.

  Malcolm De Chazal

  Children, Poet

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• Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Philosophy, Two, Half

  "Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books)". Book by Gaston Bachelard edited by Suzanne Bachelard, 1988.

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• It has often struck me that the relation of two important members of the social body to one another has never been sufficiently considered, or treated of, so far as I know, either by the philosopher or the poet.

  James Payn

  Two, Important, Body

  James Payn (1882). “Sammlung”

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• Novelists don't age as quickly as philosophers, who often face professional senility in their late twenties.

  Martin Amis

  Age, Twenties, Novelists

  Martin Amis (2014). “The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000”, p.315, Vintage

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• The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.

  Aleister Crowley

  Integrity, Ambition, Principles

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• Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Philosophy, Science, Moments

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