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Philosophy Quotes

Browse 18200 quotes about Philosophy.

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Philosophy Quotes

“While the dogmatist is harmful, the sceptic is useless ...; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance. Knowledge is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead of saying 'I know this', we ought to say 'I more or less know something more or less like this'. ... Knowledge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision of arithmetic.”

KnowsShouldPhilosophyScienceCertainKnowledgeKnowingIgnoranceOughtConceptsAffairPracticalsCertaintyUselessNot KnowingPrecisePrecisionArithmeticSceptic
Author:Bertrand Russell
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“No one can stop or control your thought process or your thinking. You can think anything you want. But that doesn't seem to be the point. The thinking process has to be directed into a certain approach... not in accord with certain dogma, philosophy, or concepts. Instead, one has to know the thinker itself.”

ThinkingKnowsWantPhilosophySeemsCertainProcessApproachConceptsThinkerDogmaAccordThought ProcessThinking Process
Book:The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Seven: The Art of Calligraphy (Excerpts); Dharma Art; Visual Dharma (Excerpts); Selecte d Poems; Selected Writings
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“But in the end one also has to understand that the needs that religion has satisfied and philosophy is now supposed to satisfy are not immutable; they can be weakened and exterminated. Consider, for example, that Christian distress of mind that comes from sighing over ones inner depravity and care for ones salvation - all concepts originating in nothing but errors of reason and deserving, not satisfaction, but obliteration.”

NeedsMindEndsReasonPhilosophyCareChristianChristianityExampleConceptsSalvationErrorsSatisfactionSatisfiedDistressDeservingDepravity
Book:Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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“The fact that astrology nevertheless yields valid results proves that it is not the apparent positions of the stars which work, but rather the times which are measured or determined by arbitrarily named stellar positions. Time thus proves to be a stream of energy filled with qualities and not, as our philosophy would have it, an abstract concept or precondition of knowledge.”

PhilosophyFactsEnergyStarsResultsQualityPositionProveConceptsFilledDeterminedAbstractStreamsYieldNeverthelessAstrologyStellar
Book:Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal
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“A meme (rhymes with dream) is a unit of information (a catchphrase, a concept, a tune, a notion of fashion, philosophy or politics) that leaps from brain to brain. Memes compete with one another for replication, and are passed down through a population much the same way genes pass through a species. Potent memes can change minds, alter behavior, catalyze collective mindshifts and transform cultures. Which is why meme warfare has become the geopolitical battle of our information age. Whoever has the memes has the power.”

WayMindPhilosophyDreamAgeCultureBrainFashionInformationBattleBehaviorConceptsSpeciesNotionPopulationTunesCollectivesLeapGenesWarfareUnitsRhymeInformation AgeWhy MeMemesGeopoliticalReplication
Author:Kalle Lasn
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“In the general tendency toward specialization, philosophy too has established itself as a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content. In so doing, philosophy has denied its own constitutive concept: the intellectual freedom that does not obey the dictates of specialized knowledge.”

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Book:Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords
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“At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.”

NeedsPhilosophyRealityIntellectualConceptsConcernLaborCommittedSeparationAbstractBoresManualsUntruePrevailingEnslavementTranscendingPhilosophicSubversionManual Labor
Author:Herbert Marcuse
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“Subjective reason ... is inclined to abandon the fight with religion by setting up two different brackets, one for science and philosophy, and one for institutionalized mythology, thus recognizing both of them. For the philosophy of objective reason there is no such way out. Since it hold to the concept of objective truth, it must take a positive or a negative stand with regard to the content of established religion.”

WayTwoDifferentReasonPhilosophyFightingConceptsNegativeRegardMythologySettingObjectivesSettingsAbandonRecognizingSubjectiveBracketsObjective TruthScience And Philosophy
Book:Eclipse of Reason
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“men are not born with a faculty for the universal and ... women are not reduced at birth to the particular. The universal has been, and is continually, at every moment, appropriated by men. It does not happen by magic, it must be done. It is an act, a criminal act, perpetrated by one class against another. It is an act carried out at the level of concepts, philosophy, politics.”

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Book:The Straight Mind: And Other Essays
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“We need many more intrepid women who set out to expand both their and our concepts of the world. We need them in writing just as we need them in politics. We need that sense of adventure, of reaching wider, delving deeper, pushing further afield, whether that field be geographical, intellectual, political, personal, or all of these and more. Enough with decorousness. Let us risk preconceptions and treasured philosophies, bodies and souls. Let us be big and bawdy and full of courage. Let's go.”

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Author:Lesley Hazleton
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“From the 5th grade through the 4th year of college, our young people are being indoctrinated with a Marxist philosophy and I am fearful of the harvest. The younger generation is further to the left than most adults realize. The old concepts of our Founding Fathers are scoffed and jeered at by young moderns whose goals appear to be the destruction of integrity and virtue, and the glorification of pleasure, thrills, and self-indulgence.”

PeopleYearsSelfPhilosophyYoungFatherLeftGoalRealizingPleasureVirtueGenerationsCollegeIntegrityConceptsAdultsDestructionGradesFearfulHarvestFoundingIndulgenceOur Founding FathersMarxistYounger GenerationSelf IndulgenceGlorification
Author:Ezra Taft Benson
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“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”

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Book:Dynamics of Faith
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“Logical investigations can obviously be a useful tool for philosophy. They must, however, be informed by a sensitivity to the philosophical significance of the formalism and by a generous admixture of common sense, as well as a thorough understanding both of the basic concepts and of the technical details of the formal material used. It should not be supposed that the formalism can grind out philosophical results in a manner beyond the capacity of ordinary philosophical reasoning. There is no mathematical substitute for philosophy.”

ShouldWellsPhilosophyUsedUnderstandingResultsCommonMaterialsOrdinaryConceptsCapacityToolsPhilosophicalDetailsCommon SenseMathematicalGenerousReasoningLogicalSignificanceSubstitutesInvestigationFormalSensitivityGrindThoroughThorough Understanding
Author:Saul Kripke
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“Failing at something is one thing, but Buddhism tells us that it is up to us how we interpret that failure [Buddhism] a philosophy and way of life that resonates with me I identify with it. I agree with so much of the sentiment behind it. I enjoy the liberating effect it's had on me to get back into the game Buddhism, with its concepts of karma and rebirth, have freed me from the twin fears of death and life without rugby, like life, will also come to an end.”

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Author:Jonny Wilkinson
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“It is a thoughtless and immodest presumption to learn anything about art from philosophy. Some do begin as if they hoped to learnsomething new here, since philosophy cannot and should not do anything further than develop the given art experiences and the existing art concepts into a science, improve the views of art, and promote them with the help of a thoroughly scholarly art history, and produce that logical mood about these subjects too which unites absolute liberalism with absolute rigor.”

IfsShouldArtPhilosophyHelpingGivenViewsSubjectsProduceConceptsAbsolutesPhilosophicalMoodLiberalismLogicalSomething NewPresumptionArt HistoryRigorScholarly
Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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“Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of 'fair play' must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.”

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Author:Jimmy Doolittle
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“The kind of approach I take is different from much of experimental philosophy. Although the experimental philosophers and I are certainly in agreement about the relevance of empirical work to philosophy, a good deal of their work is devoted to understanding features of our folk concepts, and in this respect, at least, I see them as making the same mistake as those armchair philosophers who are interested in conceptual analysis.”

KindDifferentPhilosophyUnderstandingDealsMistakeApproachConceptsFolksPhilosopherFeaturesAnalysisAgreementDevotedRelevanceSame MistakesArmchairsMaking The Same Mistakes
Author:Hilary Kornblith
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“The experimentalists think that we can only get at our concepts by way of empirical investigation, while the armchair philosophers think that we can skip the experiments and figure things out from our armchairs. What they have in common, however, is regarding our concepts as the targets of philosophical theorising, and I just don't think that, in the vast majority of cases, the subject matter of philosophy has our concepts as its target.”

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Author:Hilary Kornblith
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