Best 2580 quotes in «philosophical quotes» category

But, in fact, materialism is among the most problematic of philosophical standpoints, the most impoverished in its explanatory range, and among the most willful and (for want of a better word) magical in its logic, even if it has been in fashion for a couple of centuries or more.

But, indeed, the science of logic and the whole framework of philosophical thought men have kept since the days of Plato and Aristotle, has no more essential permanence as a final expression of the human mind, than the Scottish Longer Catechism.

But in philosophy, sometimes the baby ought to go out with the bath water.

But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.

But the philosophical and scientific process which I call 'secularization' necessarily involves the divesting of spiritual meaning from the world of nature; the desacralization of politics from human affairs; and the deconsecration of values from the human mind and conduct.

By daily dying, I have come to be.

By late accounts from Rotterdam, that city seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement. Indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely unexpected--so entirely novel--so utterly at variance with preconceived opinions--as to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears.

By tracing the careers of the four members of the Philosophical Breakfast Club, Laura Snyder has found a wonderful way not just to tell the great stories of 19th-century science, but to bring them vividly to life.

Cannot people realize how large an income is thrift?

Can an ass be tragic?--To perish under a burden that one can neither bear nor cast off? The case of the philosopher.

Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.

Carla Hesse has given us an astonishing new look at women's struggle for independent expression and moral autonomy during the French Revolution and afterward. Denied the political and civil rights of men, literary women plunged into the expanded world of publication, answering the men's philosophical treatises with provocative novels about women's choices and chances. Lively and learned, The Other Enlightenment links women from Madame de Stael to Simone de Beauvoir in an alternate and daring path to the modern.

Catholicism is the most philosophical branch of Christianity.

Cease to think that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayers.

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.

Change in all things is sweet.

Certain issues in philosophy of science (having to do with observation and the definition of a theory's empirical import) had beenmisconstrued as issues in philosophy of logic and of language. With respect to modality, I hold the exact opposite: important philosophical problems concerning language have been misconstrued as relating to the content of science and the nature of the world. This is not at all new, but is the traditional nominalist line.

Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing. It embodies, indeed, something better thanthe metaphysics of the Stone Age, namely, as was said, the inherited experience and acumen of many generations of men.

Certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

Chinese were bornwith an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naivete, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them.... If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.

Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance.

Classical philosophical theism maintained the ontological distinction between God and creative world that is necessary for any genuine theism by conceiving them to be of different substances, with particular attributes predicated of each.

Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation. 'Common sense' is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper (folklore as it is normally understood) and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.

Confidence cannot find a place wherein to rest in safety.

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

Confine yourself to the present.

Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

Creationists often appeal to the facts of science to support their view, and evolutionists often appeal to philosophical assumptions from outside science.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

Creeds and causal systems have argued with each other for millennia, and even so we and our ancestors have managed to live in a world of differing opinions. Philosophical disputes don't often affect the price of fish or wine.

Dancers are the athletes of God.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

Democracy passes into despotism.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Despite all philosophical differences, all major world religions have the same potential to create good human beings.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

Do not yield to misfortunes, but advance more boldly to meet them, as your fortune permits you.

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Don't you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle...

Do you know that my personal crusade in life (in the philosophical sense) is not merely to fight collectivism, nor to fight altruism? These are only consequences, effects, not causes. I am out after the real cause, the real root of evil on earth the irrational.