Philosophic Quotes - Page 4

• Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.

  William James

  Philosophy, Mind, Should

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.16, Xist Publishing

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• So the nature required to make a really noble Guardian of our commonwealth will be swift and strong, spirited, and philosophic.

  Plato

  Strong, Noble, Clarity

  11 Copy quote

• We really cannot see what equanimity there is in jerking a lacerated carp out of the water by the jaws, merely because it has no the power of making a noise; for we presume that the most philosophic of anglers would hardly delight in catching a shrieking fish.

  Leigh Hunt

  Water, Noise, Delight

  Leigh Hunt (1822). “The Indicator”, p.270

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that fiction and, as I say, history and biography are immensely important, not only for their own sake, because they provide a picture of life now and of life in the past, but also as vehicles for the expression of general philosophic ideas, religious ideas, social ideas.

  Aldous Huxley

  Religious, Past, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead.

  Bertrand Russell

  Doe, May, Littles

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.31, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a philosophic theory is once ruled out of court, no one can tell when it will appear again.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Court, Theory, Ifs

  4 Copy quote

• No book has yet been written in praise of a woman who let her husband and children starve or suffer while she invented even the most useful things, or wrote books, or expressed herself in art, or evolved philosophic systems

  Anna Garlin Spencer

  Art, Children, Husband

  Anna Garlin Spencer (1908). “Woman's Share in Social Culture”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poincaré [was] the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. ... Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in the gift of clear exposition.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Men, Vision, Lasts

  4 Copy quote

• If freedom is to flourish the philosophic foundations of a free society must be kept a living intellectual issue and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of the liveliest minds.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Issues, Imagination, Challenges

  10 Copy quote

• When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.

  John Adams

  Miracle, Intuition, Atheism

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.85

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in detail is admitted; fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Adventure, Self, Common Sense

  5 Copy quote

• Modern Americans travel light, with little philosophic baggage other than a fervent belief in their right to the pursuit of happiness.

  George Will

  Pursuit Of Happiness, Light, Littles

  George F. Will (1978). “The pursuit of happiness, and other sobering thoughts”, HarperCollins Publishers

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man: he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world, ininvention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Hero, Philosophical, Mean

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.1161, e-artnow

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Imagine, capitalist America also divides the anarchists into two categories, philosophic and criminal. The first are accepted in highest circles; one of them is even high in the councils of the Wilson Administration. The second category, to which we have the honor of belonging, is persecuted and often imprisoned. Yours also seems to be a distinction without a difference. Don't you think so?

  Emma Goldman

  Thinking, Circles, Two

  11 Copy quote

• One way of saying that is that there is an objective reality beyond our mind. A way to think of this in a philosophic sense is to look between the two great extremes: the idealist philosophy that says mind and consciousness is the only thing and that matter is simply an illusion, or a Maya, the product of mind; and the other extreme, a strict materialist determinism, which says that mind and consciousness is a secondary phenomenon of the collision of matter.

  Edgar Mitchell

  Philosophy, Thinking, Reality

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.

  William James

  Philosophy, Order, Medicine

  4 Copy quote

• I started to call myself a "rational therapist" in January 1955; later I used the term "rational emotive." Now I call myself a "rational emotive behavior therapist." But from the start, I always included philosophic techniques as well as experiential, emotional and behavioral techniques.

  Albert Ellis

  Emotional, Technique, January

  7 Copy quote

• We believe that the materials and the stories taken from the raw can be finer (more real in the philosophic sense) than the acted article.

  John Grierson

  Real, Taken, Believe

  John Grierson (1966). “Grierson on Documentary”, p.147, Univ of California Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Truth Will Set U Free is about honesty. My philosophic belief that ultimately being true to yourself is liberating, with every individual's inalienable right to be who they are without fear or recrimination.

  Corey Hart

  Honesty, Be True To Yourself, Belief

  4 Copy quote

• The philosophic aim of education must be to get each one out of his isolated class and into the one humanity.

  Paul Goodman

  Education, Class, Humanity

  11 Copy quote

• I needn't tell you that success and failure prove nothing - the whole thing is a lottery. It's pleasant to succeed; but for a philosophic mind it oughtn't to be very upsetting to fail.

  George Sand

  Upset, Mind, Succeed

  Gustave Flaubert, George Sand (1999). “Flaubert-Sand: The Correspondence of Gustave Flaubert & George Sand”, Harvill Press

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a very philosophic sense I think doing the work is itself a good thing. But at the end of the day, since we're taking other people's shekels to do it, and their work is being able to make a return out of it, it forces you to consider the fact that you're doing it for other people. The whole construct is built around the assumption that it's going to get shared, and that someone else is going to find value in it - entertainment, catharsis, enlightenment, or whatever.

  Edward Norton

  Thinking, People, The End Of The Day

  Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Atheism ... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

  Emma Goldman

  Fighting, Men, Ideas

  Emma Goldman (1915). “Mother Earth Bulletin”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church.

  Edward Gibbon

  Hands, Law, Omnipotence

  Edward Gibbon (1854). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.84

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science, like art, religion, political theory, or psychoanalysis - is work that holds out the promise of philosophic understanding, excites in us the belief that we can 'make sense of it all.

  Vivian Gornick

  Art, Science, Political

  Vivian Gornick (2013). “Women in Science: Then and Now”, p.53, The Feminist Press at CUNY

  8 Copy quote

  Show source