P Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with P. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Philosopher Bertrand Russell suggested that 'Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.' And, it was Albert Einstein who explained, 'Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' So which is it - stupidity, ignorance or insanity - that explains the behavior of my fellow Americans who call for greater government involvement in our lives?”
Source: American Contempt for Liberty
“Philosopher is becoming God in the process called life.”
“Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images, the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire: that is MUHAMMAD. As regards all the standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask IS THERE ANY MAN GREATER THAN HE?”
Source: History of Turkey
“Philosopher: A lover of wisdom, which is to say, Truth.”
“Philosophers (and probably most intellectuals) are more interested in pursuing what they see as the logical implications of their theories than they are in paying attention to the shlumpy diversity of defensible values that people actually have, and then trying to figure out how these might be negotiated in the life of an agent or community.”
“Philosophers and aestheticians may offer elegant and profound definitions of art and beauty, but for the painter they are all summed up in the phrase: To create a harmony.”
“Philosophers and common heathen believed one God, to whom all things were referred; but under this God they worshipped many inferior and subservient gods.”
“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.”
“Philosophers and psychologists have long puzzled over the question of how we know as much as we do despite our limited experiences. One way is to see how children learn. Another example is consciousness. The concept is usually explored by armchair academics. Looking at kids expands our conceptions of consciousness.”
“Philosophers and scientists confidently offer up traits said to be uniquely human, and the monkeys and apes casually knock them down -- toppling the pretension that humans constitute some sort of biological aristocracy among the beings on Earth.”
“Philosophers and scientists throughout the ages have been concerned with these questions. Still, the question is not only about posing the question but also about posing the right question and understanding the meaning of words and language. The right questions and good reasoning often lead to the correct answers, but we are dealing with how and when we establish the right concepts. Have we ever? How far are the concepts, beyond our words and language, from the intrinsic nature of what we try to describe and comprehend?”
Source: ABSOLUTE
“Philosophers and theologians have argued for centuries over the morality of targeted assassinations - a technique that the Israelis use with some frequency - without ever reaching anything approaching consensus.”
“Philosophers and theologians have yet to learn that a physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle. Our own nature demands from us this double allegiance.”
“Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions.”
“Philosophers are all caught up in their philosophies. That's their house of cards. Religious leaders are caught up in their religious movements to the point where they forget about freedom. Everybody's got their drama going.”
“Philosophers are as jealous as women; each wants a monopoly of praise.”
“Philosophers are capable of almost endless enjoyment of mutual misunderstanding.”
“Philosophers are composed of flesh and blood as well as other human creatures; and however sublimated and refined the theory of these may be, a little practical frailty is as incident to them as to other mortals. It is, indeed, in theory only, and not in practice, as we have before hinted, that consists the difference: for though such great beings think much better and more wisely, they always act exactly like other men. They know very well how to subdue all appetites and passions, and to despise both pain and pleasure; and this knowledge affords much delightful contemplation, and is easily acquired; but the practice would be vexatious and troublesome; and, therefore, the same wisdom which teaches them to know this, teaches them to avoid carrying it into execution.”
Source: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
“Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.”
“Philosophers are in the habit of setting themselves before life and experience.”
Source: Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two
“Philosophers are never happy here. Now is not their time, and here is not their space. They live there, they live somewhere else.”
“Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about - about what the issues really are - and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.”
Source: The Intentional Stance
“Philosophers are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration" most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.”
“Philosophers are often actively disinterested in what happens between the cup and the lips (after all, that's "non-ideal theory").”
“Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult 'What is that?”
“Philosophers are only men in armor after all.”
Source: The posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club
“Philosophers are people who do violence, but have no army at their disposal, and so subjugate the world by locking it into a system.”
“Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.”
“Philosophers are smart, analytical, and skeptical. For these reasons they are relatively unbiased.”
“Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.”
Source: Character and Opinion in the United States
“Philosophers call God the great unknown The great misknown is more like it!”
“Philosophers can debate the meaning of life, but you need a Lord who can declare the meaning of life.”
Source: Traveling Light: Premier Library Edition
“Philosophers conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride, bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually pious.”
“Philosophers do need to have intuitions of various specific sorts: ethical, metaphysical, etc., depending on their targeted subject matter. And they must make intuition reports, as they record the contents of their intuitions. But they need not go into whether an intuition has been enjoyed.”
“Philosophers don't say things you don't know; they articulate ideas in a captivating manner that motivates you to take action.”
“Philosophers don't all believe that ethics is just based on intuition. That's just stupid! It's ignoramus!”
“Philosophers feel a little more cautious about letting down their technical guard lest the general public doesn't recognize their special credentials. It's the fact that philosophy is of general interest that, paradoxically, keeps philosophers from wanting to speak in a way that's accessible to the general public.”
“Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister - corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.”
“Philosophers have a long tradition of marrying stupid women, from Socrates on. They think it clever.”
Source: Plays, one
“Philosophers have actually devoted themselves, in the main, neither to perceiving the world, nor to spinning webs of conceptual theory, but to interpreting the meaning of the civilizations which they have represented, and to attempting the interpretation of whatever minds in the universe, human or divine, they believed to be real.”
Source: Josiah Royce: Selected Writings
“Philosophers have argued about the strongest emotion known to man. Some say ‘love’, others ‘hate’, others ‘fear’. I am disposed to put ‘curiosity’ on a level, at least, with these august sensations, just mere simple inquisitiveness.”
Source: Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson
“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have known all along that it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek.”
Source: Jitterbug Perfume
“Philosophers have done wisely when they have told us to cultivate our reason rather than our feelings, for reason reconciles us to the daily things of existence; our feelings teach us to yearn after the far, the difficult, the unseen.”
“Philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world in various way; the point, however, is to change it”
Source: Eleven Theses on Feuerbach
“Philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it”
Source: Eleven Theses on Feuerbach
“Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Of the two kinds the latter is by far the more desirable. Indeed all that is most worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves.”
Source: The Mis-Education of the Negro
“Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.”
“Philosophers have often held dispute As to the seat of thought in man and brute For that the power of thought attends the latter My friend, thy beau, hath made a settled matter, And spite of dogmas current in all ages, One settled fact is better than ten sages. (O,Tempora! O,Mores!)”
Source: Edgar Allan Poe Annotated and Illustrated Entire Stories and Poems
“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.”
Source: How Pleasure Works: Why we like what we like
“Philosophers have questions. Scientists have theories.
Entrepreneurs have projects. Artists have obsessions.
And amateurs have ideas.”
Source: The Sovereign Artist: Meditations on Lifestyle Design