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Philosopher Quotes

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Philosopher Quotes

“King René of Anjou [(1409-80)]was a strange compound of amiable, great and trifling qualities. He was so excellent a sovereign as to acquire the surnom of the Good. He was brave in war, delighted in tournaments and wrote on them, instituted festivals and processions, partly religious and partly burlesque, was a fond husband, a romantic lover, a good painter for that age, and a true philosopher.”

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Author:Horace Walpole
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“Still, it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.”

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Book:The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)
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“The useless search of philosophers for a cause of the universe is a regressus in infinitum (a stepping backwards into the infinite) and resembles climbing up an endless ladder, the recurring question as to the cause of the cause rendering the attainment of a final goal impossible.”

UniverseCausesGoalImpossibleInfiniteFinalsPhilosopherEndlessUselessClimbingBackwardsLaddersAttainmentRenderingRecurringClimbing Up
Book:Force and Matter: Or, Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe. With a System of Morality Based Thereon
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“When philosophers use a word--"knowledge," "being," "object," "I," "proposition," "name"--and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?--What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.”

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Book:Philosophical Investigations
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“Let us become thoroughly sensible of the weakness, blindness, and narrow limits of human reason: Let us duly consider its uncertainty and endless contrarieties, even in subjects of common life and practice.... When these topics are displayed in their full light, as they are by some philosophers and almost all divines; who can retain such confidence in this frail faculty of reason as to pay any regard to its determinations in points so sublime, so abstruse, so remote from common life and experience?”

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Book:Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)
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“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.”

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Book:Josiah Royce: Selected Writings
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“There is a sort of myth of History that philosophers have.... History for philosophers is some sort of great, vast continuity in which the freedom of individuals and economic or social determinations come and get entangled. When someone lays a finger on one of those great themes--continuity, the effective exercise of human liberty, how individual liberty is articulated with social determinations--when someone touches one of these three myths, these good people start crying out that History is being raped or murdered.”

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Author:Michel Foucault
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“His system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers... He was the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man.”

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Book:Jefferson: Political Writings
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“It is clear that everybody interested in science must be interested in world 3 objects. A physical scientist, to start with, may be interested mainly in world 1 objects--say crystals and X-rays. But very soon he must realize how much depends on our interpretation of the facts, that is, on our theories, and so on world 3 objects. Similarly, a historian of science, or a philosopher interested in science must be largely a student of world 3 objects.”

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Book:Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography
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“Philosophers of science constantly discuss theories and representation of reality, but say almost nothing about experiment, technology, or the use of knowledge to alter the world. This is odd, because 'experimental method' used to be just another name for scientific method.... I hope [to] initiate a Back-to-Bacon movement, in which we attend more seriously to experimental science. Experimentation has a life of its own.”

WorldUseRealityScienceUsedNamesTechnologyMovementTheoryMethodPhilosopherExperimentsUsed To BeOddRepresentationExperimentationScientific MethodInitiateExperimental ScienceUse Of Knowledge
Book:Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science
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“Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us ofbeing bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.”

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Book:Essays in Quasi-Realism
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“We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it, bit by bit, plank by plank, though meanwhile there is nothing to carry us along but the evolving conceptual scheme itself. The philosopher's task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea.”

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Author:Willard Van Orman Quine
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“One thing is certain: the riddle of mind, long a topic for philosophers, has taken on new urgency. Under pressure from the computer, the question of mind in relation to machine is becoming a central cultural preoccupation. It is becoming for us what sex was to the Victorians--threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.”

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Book:The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit
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“Men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, and are the victims at all times of the nearest object. There is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. Our experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood.”

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Book:The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Pilate was in advance of his time. For "truth" itself is an abstract noun, a camel, that is, of a logical construction, which cannot get past the eye even of a grammarian. We approach it cap and categories in hand: we ask ourselves whether Truth is a substance (the Truth, the Body of Knowledge), or a quality (something like the colour red, inhering in truths), or a relation ("correspondence"). But philosophers should take something more nearly their own size to strain at. What needs discussing rather is the use, or certain uses, of the word "true." In vino, possibly, "veritas," but in a sober symposium "verum."”

NeedsShouldSaidUseHandsEyeTruthPastCertainAsksAnswersTruth IsApproachRelationSizePhilosopherAbstractLogicalCategoriesConstructionSoberStrainCapsDiscussingCamelsNounsVinoSymposium
Author:J. L. Austin
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“When science shall have effectually demonstrated to us the origin of matter, and proved the fallacy of the occultists and old philosophers who held (as their descendants now hold) that matter is but one of the correlations of spirit, then will the world of skeptics have a right to reject the old Wisdom, or throw the charge of obscenity in the teeth of the old religions.”

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Book:Isis Unveiled: (Two Volumes in a Slipcase)
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“I am obsessed by the idea of silence. I went through an entire library studying art, artists and their critics, philosophers, too, on the meaning and significance of the color white. I dreamed of white birds and white bears. I thought about the white pages of my mother's journals. I became enthralled with John Cage and his work, 4'33”, his masterpiece of ambient sound. Rauschenberg, too. And then at some point I let go. What sticks to the soul is what gets placed on the page. Maybe that's the unknown part, the mystery, the power of the empty page.”

ArtIdeasSoulMotherArtistSoundWhiteSilenceStudyMysteryColorBearsLetting GoPagesBirdEmptySticksCriticsLibraryPhilosopherObsessedSignificanceJournalCagesMasterpieceAmbientColor WhiteStudying ArtWhite Birds
Author:Terry Tempest Williams
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“It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is anoptimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness--physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.”

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Author:Lord Chesterfield
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“There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future.”

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Author:Kenneth E. Boulding
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