Philosopher Quotes
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All the things an artist must be: poet, explorer of nature, philosopher!
Paul Klee
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A rock or stone is not a subject that, of itself, may interest a philosopher to study; but, when he comes to see the necessity of those hard bodies, in the constitution of this earth, or for the permanency of the land on which we dwell, and when he finds that there are means wisely provided for the renovation of this necessary decaying part, as well as that of every other, he then, with pleasure, contemplates this manifestation of design, and thus connects the mineral system of this earth with that by which the heavenly bodies are made to move perpetually in their orbits.
James Hutton
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The words 'theory' and 'practice' are of Greek origin; they carry our thoughts back to the ancient philosophers by whom they were contrived, and by whom they were also contrasted and placed in opposition, as denoting two mutually conflicting and mutually inconsistent ideas. ... [this fallacy] based on a double system of natural laws retarded for centuries the development of physical science, notably mechanics.
William John Macquorn Rankine
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A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The man who enters his wife's dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool.
Honore de Balzac
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One trait in the philosopher's character we can assume is his love of the knowledge that reveals eternal reality, the realm unaffected by change and decay.
Plato
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A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Tom Stoppard
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Because Christian morality leaves animals out of account, they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere 'things,' mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights, and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes that see the sun!
Arthur Schopenhauer
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The denial of any distinction between foreseen and intended consequences, as far as responsibility is concerned, was not made by Sidgwick in developing any one 'method of ethics'; he made this important move on behalf of everybody and just on its own account; and I think it plausible to suggest that this move on the part of Sidgwick explains the difference between old-fashioned Utilitarianism and the consequentialism, as I name it, which marks him and every English academic moral philosopher since him.
G. E. M. Anscombe
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Maybe belief is the biggest lie. In ages past, the earliest philosophers tried to explain the stars in the sky and the world around them. One of them conceived of the notion that the universe was mounted on giant crystal spheres controlled by a giant machine, which explained the movements of the heavens. He was laughed at and told that such a machine would be so huge and noisy that everyone would hear it. He simply replied that we are born with that noise all around us, and that we are so used to hearing it that we cannot hear it at all.
Dan Abnett
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There is nothing so strange and so unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosopher or another.
Rene Descartes
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Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep/ Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind.
William Wordsworth
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The philosopher caught in the nets of language.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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When I was twelve, I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate in education and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said that I either wanted to be a philosopher or a clown, and I understood then, I think, that much depended on whether or not I found the world worth philosophizing about, and what the price of seriousness might be.
Judith Butler
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The best physician is also a philosopher.
Galen
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The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all.
Thomas Carlyle
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Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll.... It does not mean that everything in life is relative.
Albert Einstein
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The pipe draws wisdom from the lips of the philosopher, and shuts up the mouth of the foolish; it generates a style of conversation, contemplative, thoughtful, benevolent, and unaffected.
William Makepeace Thackeray
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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
William James
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It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e.g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be false; and so philosophers have been hopelessly divided on the question, which is the true one.
Morris Raphael Cohen
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To turn Karl [Popper]'s view on its head, it is precisely the abandonment of critical discourse that marks the transition of science. Once a field has made the transition, critical discourse recurs only at moments of crisis when the bases of the field are again in jeopardy. Only when they must choose between competing theories do scientists behave like philosophers.
Thomas Kuhn
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Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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Socrates ... is the first philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph], ... Thinking serves life, while among all previous philosophers life had served thought and knowledge. ... Thus Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical implications.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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I began to understand that 'America' in reality belonged to the whole world and not just to Americans. The idea of America had already been invented by the philosophers, the vagabonds, the dispersed of this earth, long before the Spanish ships got there. Those whom we call Americans have only rented it for a time. If they behave badly, we can discover another 'America'. The contract can be canceled at any time.
Sergio Leone
