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Philosophy Quotes

Browse 18200 quotes about Philosophy.

Philosophy Quotes

“I am at war... with the principal personage of traditional philosophy, that abstract subject who masquerades as everyone and anyone, but is really a male subject in disguise.”

War Philosophy Subjects Males Traditional Abstract Principal Disguise Masquerade

Author:Pam Gems

“[Among the books he chooses, a statesman] ought to read interesting books on history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever written in prose or verse.”

Book Philosophy Government Science Interesting Fiction History Written Subjects Ought Accounts Prose Verses Good Book Statesmen Science And Philosophy Interesting Book

Book:Bully!

Source: Bully!

“...But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first.”

Ifs Thinking Firsts Doe Philosophy Might Life Is Subjects Effects Particular Cat Valuable Graves Superiors Mice Beaten Remarks Pessimist

Book:The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

Source: The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton

“Our design, not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject, not manual, but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena.”

Source: Newton's Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

“One of the questions on which clarity of thinking is now most necessary is that of the relation between the methods of science and of Marxist philosophy. Although much has already been written on the subject, yet there is still an enormous amount of confusion and contradictory statement.”

Thinking Stills Philosophy Written Subjects Amount Relation Method Enormous Statements Confusion Clarity Contradictory Marxist

Author:John Desmond Bernal

“The philosopher ... subjects experience to his critical judgment, and this contains a value judgment namely, that freedom from toil is preferable to toil, and an intelligent life is preferable to a stupid life. It so happened that philosophy was born with these values. Scientific thought had to break this union of value judgment and analysis, for it became increasingly clear that the philosophic values did not guide the organisation of society.”

Source: One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society

“The adjective "political" in "political philosophy" designates not so much the subject matter as a manner of treatment; from this point of view, I say, "political philosophy" means primarily not the philosophic study of politics, but the political, or popular, treatment of philosophy, or the political introduction to philosophy the attempt to lead qualified citizens, or rather their qualified sons, from the political life to the philosophic life.”

Mean Matter Philosophy Political Views Study Subjects Son Citizens Point Of View Treatment Qualified Introduction Political Philosophy Subject Matter Adjectives Political Life Philosophic

Author:Leo Strauss

“Whatever has a tendency to promote the civil intercourse of nations by an exchange of benefits is a subject as worthy of philosophy as of politics.”

Philosophy Nations Subjects Benefits Worthy Tendencies Commerce Intercourse

Book:THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…

Source: THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…

“Religion is the eldest sister of philosophy: on whatever subjects they may differ, it is unbecoming in either to quarrel, and most so about their inheritance.”

May Philosophy Religion Subjects Inheritance Quarrels Eldest Unbecoming

Book:The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].

Source: The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].

“Questions are not happenstance thoughts nor are questions common problems of today which one picks up from hearsay and booklearning and decks out with a gesture of profundity questions grow out of confrontation with the subject matter and the subject matter is there only where eyes are, it is in this manner that questions will be posed and all the more considering that questions that have today fallen out of fashion in the great industry of problems. One stands up for nothing more than the normal running of the industry. Philosophy interprets its corruption as the resurrection of metaphysics.”

“My philosophy is that to be a director you cannot be subject to anyone, even the head of the studio. I threatened to quit each time I didn't get my way, but no one ever let me walk out.”

Way Philosophy Walks Subjects Directors Let Me Studios Quitting My Way Threatened

Author:Dorothy Arzner

“For the establishment, philosophy is both an elitist and an idealist discipline: In high school, it is a compulsory subject; at university, they teach the idealist line. They are conducting a conversation with themselves.”

Philosophy School Lines Teach Subjects Discipline Conversation High School University Establishment Idealist Conducting Elitist Compulsory

Author:Michel Onfray

“It's nice when people are passionate about something, and it's always better when they let the subject tell the story, more so then when you can tell people are trying to get their own philosophy into it.”

People Trying Philosophy Stories Nice Subjects Passionate

Author:Vince Vaughn

“The Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdom of God; and to prepare their minds to become his obedient subjects; leavingthe world, and the Philosophy thereof, to the disputation of men, for the exercising of their natural Reason.”

Men World Mind Reason Philosophy Religion Natural Written Subjects Exercise Bible Philosophical Scripture Kingdoms Kingdom Of God Obedient

Book:Leviathan

Source: Leviathan

“The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.”

“The beginning of sense, not to say wisdom, is to realize that 'doing an action,' as used in philosophy, is a highly abstract expression--it is a stand-in used in the place of any (or almost any?) verb with a personal subject, in the same sort of way that 'thing' is a stand-in for anynoun substantive, and 'quality' a stand-in for the adjective.”

Way Philosophy Action Used Realizing Quality Subjects Expression Abstract Verbs Adjectives

Author:J. L. Austin

“Philosophy treats of physics where a more careful knowledge is required because the problems which come under this head are numerous... So the reader of Ctesibius or Archimedes and the other writers of treatises of the same class will not be able to appreciate them unless he has been trained in these subjects by the philosophers.”

Has Beens Philosophy Problem Able Class Subjects Reader Appreciate Treats Philosopher Careful Physics

Author:Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

“Colleges don't teach economics properly. Unfortunately we learn little from the experience of the past. An economist must know, besides his subject, ethics, logic, philosophy, the humanities and sociology, in fact everything that is part of how we live and react to one another.”

Knows Littles Philosophy Facts Past Humanity Teach Economy Subjects College Ethics Economics Logic Economist Sociology

Author:Bernard Baruch

“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.”

“Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.”

Philosophy Purpose Views Subjects Serious Regard Point Of View Pleasantries

Book:Delphi Collected Works of Voltaire (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Collected Works of Voltaire (Illustrated)

“Laws provide, as much as ispossible that the goods and health of subjects be not injured by the fraud and violence of others. They do not guard them from thenegligence or ill-husbandry of the possessors themselves.”

Philosophy Law Political Violence Subjects Ill Classic Goods Fraud Injured Political Philosophy

Book:A Letter Concerning Toleration: Latin and English Texts Revised and Edited with Variants and an Introduction

Source: A Letter Concerning Toleration: Latin and English Texts Revised and Edited with Variants and an Introduction

“... Philosophy proper is a subject, on the one hand so hopelessly obscure, on the other so astonishingly elementary, that there knowledge hardly counts.”

Philosophy Hands Subjects Obscure

Author:G. H. Hardy

“Woe be to him who tries to isolate one department of knowledge from the rest. All science is one: language, literature and history, physics, mathematics and philosophy; subjects which seem the most remote from one another are in reality connected, or rather they all form a single system.”

Trying Philosophy Reality Seems Form Literature Language Subjects Mathematics Connected Physics Department Woe

Author:Jules Michelet

“As I grew up I became increasingly interested in philosophy, or which [his family] profoundly disapproved. Everytime the subject came up they repeated with unfailing regularity, "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind." After some fifty or sixty repititions, this remark ceased to amuse me.”

Mind Matter Philosophy Subjects Grew Grew Up No Matter What Fifty Sixty Remarks Regularity

Author:Bertrand Russell

“No other book has been so chopped, knifed, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified. What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or belles lettres of classical or modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom and skepticism? With such thoroughness and erudition? Upon every chapter, line and tenet?”

Has Beens Book Philosophy Lines Psychology Modern Subjects Mass Chapters Skepticism Modern Times Venom Erudition Thoroughness

Author:Bernard Ramm

“It's progress I think, that science has joined philosophy, metaphysics & religion as subjects drunk people argue about in bars.”

People Thinking Philosophy Progress Subjects Arguing Bars Drunk Metaphysics Drunk People

Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson

“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.”

Thinking Way Matter Philosophy Common Cases Subjects Figures Concepts Philosophical Majority Philosopher Experiments Target Investigation Subject Matter Skip Armchairs

Author:Hilary Kornblith

“It is worth asking who decides what's an "obsession" and where it differs from meditation or the kind of deep dwelling on a subject we see in philosophy or the work of Robert Wilson, for instance?”

Kind Philosophy Meditation Subjects Asking Obsession Instance Dwelling Wilson

Author:Laura Mullen