Philosopher Quotes
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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
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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.
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As a philosopher, I'm not obliged to explore every unknown wilderness.
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A philosopher is a man who can look at an empty glass with a smile.
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The German philosopher Walter Benjamin had the curious notion that we could change the past. For most of us, the past is fixed while the future is open.
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The philosopher caught in the nets of language.
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The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
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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.
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The man who enters his wife's dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool.
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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.
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An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
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It's usually best not to ask philosophers anything, precisely because they have the habit of what in the Persian language is called sanud: the profitless consideration of unsettling yet inconsequential things.
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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.
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How I understand the philosopher - as a terrible explosive, endangering everthing... my concept of the philosopher is worlds removed from any concept that would include even a Kant, not to speak of academic "ruminants" and other professors of philosophy.
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Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.
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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.
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A philosopher once said, 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results.' Well, they don't!
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My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application-not far far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech-and learn them so well that words become works.
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Someone once quoted Shakespeare to the philosopher W. V. O. Quine: There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. To which Quine is said to have responded: Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth.
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No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.
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The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward.
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The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubt.
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If we only look far enough off for the consequence of our actions, we can always find some point in the combination of results by which those actions can be justified: by adopting the point of view of a Providence who arranges results, or of a philosopher who traces them, we shall find it possible to obtain perfect complacency in choosing to do what is most agreeable to us in the present moment.
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I keep reverting (to Duke Ellington), he to me is the greatest ever and my favorite jazz philosopher, as such.
