Philosophic Quotes
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Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.
Aristotle -
As the highly colored birds do not fly around in the dull, leaden plains of a sandy desert, but amid all the settings of nature's leaves and blossoms, and lights and shades — nature's framework of their picture — so there are truths which do not appear well in arid fields of philosophic inquiry.
David Swing
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What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons... we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless "Why?" and "What next?".
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
So the nature required to make a really noble Guardian of our commonwealth will be swift and strong, spirited, and philosophic.
Plato -
Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.
William James -
Kepler had to realize clearly that logical-mathematical theoretizing, no matter how lucid, could not guarantee truth by itself; that the most beautiful logical theory means nothing in natural science without comparison with the exactest experience. Without this philosophic attitude, his work would not have been possible.
Albert Einstein -
All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
William James -
Modern Existentialism... is a total European creation, perhaps the last philosophic legacy of Europe to America or whatever other civilization is now on its way to supplant Europe.
William Barrett
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Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.
Ray Bradbury -
Humanism . . . is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight.
William James -
To reflect the entire spectrum, the dynamics of the adventure novel must be invested with a philosophic synthesis of one kind or another.
Yevgeny Zamyatin -
The history of science should not be an instrument to defend any kind of social or philosophic theory; it should be used only for its own purpose, to illustrate impartially the working of reason against unreason, the gradual unfolding of truth, in all its forms, whether pleasant or unpleasant, useful of useless, welcome or unwelcome.
George Sarton -
I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
William James -
The chief requisite for the making of a good chicken pie is chicken; no amount of culinary legerdemain can make up for the lack of chicken. In the same way, the chief requisite for the history of science is intimate scientific knowledge; no amount of philosophic legerdemain can make up for its absence.
George Sarton
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Poincaré [was the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. ... Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in the gift of clear exposition.
Eric Temple Bell -
Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows through which the philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself.
Thomas Carlyle -
The process of philosophic and scientific enlightenment has shaken the stability of beliefs held explicitly as articles of faith.
Michael Polanyi -
Modern Americans travel light, with little philosophic baggage other than a fervent belief in their right to the pursuit of happiness.
George Will -
Good humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us.
Ernest Renan -
That fact that Athens could condemn its noblest citizen to death did more than make a profound impression on him. It was to shape the course of his entire philosophic endeavor.
Jostein Gaarder