P Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with P. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual.”
“Philosophy which does not help to illuminate the process of the liberation of the oppressed should be rejected.”
“Philosophy, which once seemed outmoded, remains alive because the moment of its realization was missed. The summary judgement that it had merely interpreted the world is itself crippled by resignation before reality, and becomes a defeatism of reason after the transformation of the world failed. It guarantees no place from which theory as such could be concretely convicted of the anachronism, which then as now it is suspected of. Perhaps the interpretation which promised the transition did not suffice. The moment on which the critique of theory depended is not to be prolonged theoretically. Praxis, delayed for the foreseeable future, is no longer the court of appeals against self-satisfied speculation, but for the most part the pretext under which executives strangulate that critical thought as idle which a transforming praxis most needs. After philosophy broke with the promise that it would be one with reality or at least struck just before the hour of its production, it has been compelled to ruthlessly criticize itself.”
Source: Negative Dialectics
“Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade”
Source: Lamia
“Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine - Unweave a rainbow.”
Source: Poetry Manuscripts at Harvard
“Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.”
“Philosophy will never alter the very nature of you. Philosophy does not believe in miracles and it cannot do miracles. But you can be assured that philosophy will strengthen the best and the kindest parts of your nature.”
“Philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor.”
“Philosophy will tell you what to say, eloquence will tell you how to say it”
“Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp.”
Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
“Philosophy would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity.”
“Philosophy would long ago have reached a high level if our predecessors and fathers had put this into practice; and we would not waste time on the primary difficulties, which appear now as severe as in the first centuries which noticed them. We would have the experience of assured phenomena, which would serve as principles for a solid reasoning; truth would not be so deeply sunken; nature would have taken off most of her envelopes; one would see the marvels she contains in all her individuals.”
“Philosophy would render us entirely Pyrrhonian, were not nature too strong for it.”
Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
“Philosophy. Years ago, when you were playing Plato in The Athenians you gave an interview and you said you read lot of philosophy.'
'I read life. And life is a philosophy.'
Nora had no idea what he meant, but deep down she was proud of this other version of her for dumping an A-list movie star.”
Source: The Midnight Library
“Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!”
Source: The book and the brotherhood
“Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.”
“Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy.”
“Philosophy's power to blunt all the blows of circumstance is beyond belief.”
“Philosophy's work is finding the shortest path between two points.”
“Philosophy, art, and science are not the mental objects of an objectified brain but the three aspects under which the brain becomes subject.”
Source: What Is Philosophy?
“Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.”
“Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.”
Source: Mencken Chrestomathy
“Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.”
Source: Preliminary Studies for the
“Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.”
Source: The Adventures and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
“Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.”
Source: William James: Essays and Lectures
“Philosophy, for me, is a way of relearning to look at the world, a world that is familiar to us, that we know, that is shared by all human beings and also by nonhuman beings.”
“Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth'...Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory - it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe. I think that most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been a result of just such a moment.”
“Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.”
Source: Our Knowledge of the External World
“Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.”
Source: The Problems of Philosophy
“Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.”
“Philosophy, like science, consists of theories or insights arrived at as a result of systemic reflection or reasoning in regard to the data of experience. It involves, therefore, the analysis of experience and the synthesis of the results of analysis into a comprehensive or unitary conception. Philosophy seeks a totality and harmony of reasoned insight into the nature and meaning of all the principal aspects of reality.”
“Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value.”
“Philosophy, the love of Wisdom, is at the very bottom defence against the incomprehensible.”
Source: The Decline of the West...: Form and actuality
“Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.”
Source: The Problems of Philosophy
“Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect”
Source: The Problems of Philosophy
“Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.”
Source: Who is Man?
“Philosophy, which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself because he was a thinking being and to say, 'I think therefore I am," now raises him to say ... "I think, therefore I am not," (unless he takes thought into consideration only in that humble region where it is confused with action).”
Source: The Treason of the Intellectuals
“Philosophy, while it soothes the reason, damps the ambition.”
“Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy; and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.”
Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“Philosophy... is indeed outrageous, inherently so. It seeks to disquiet the foundations of our lives and to offer us in recompense nothing better than itself- and this on the basis of no expert knowledge, of nothing closed to the ordinary human being, once... [one] lets himself or herself be informed by the process and ambition of philosophy.”
“Philosophy... is the creative perception by the spirit of the meaning of human existence.”
“Philosophy: a purple bullfinch in a lilac tree.”
“Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.”
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
“Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.”
Source: A short history of decay
“Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius Tyaneus represents the latter as informing King Phraotes that "the Oneiropolists, or Interpreters of Visions, are wont never to interpret any vision till they have first enquired the time at which it befell; for, if it were early, and of the morning sleep, they then thought that they might make a good interpretation thereof... in that the soul was then fitted for divination, and disincumbered. But if in the first sleep, or near midnight, while the soul was as yet clouded and drowned in libations, they, being wise, refused to give any interpretation.”
“Phin spared a moment of sympathy for Frank until he looked back and saw him at the bar, leaning into Clea’s cleavage. Get a grip, Frank, he thought, and then he looked down Sophie’s dress and thought, Never mind, Frank.”
Source: Welcome to Temptation/Bet Me
“Phineas had thought of me as an extension of himself.”
Source: A Separate Peace
“Phineas Riordan was exactly what came to mind when someone imagined a cruel prince from a fairytale: the kind that ruined maidens instead of saving them.”
Source: Dragon Queen
“Phish and Dave Matthews really know their audiences and really treat them well.”
“Phish has never had anything to do with any trends at all in America.”