Best 2580 quotes in «philosophical quotes» category

The intelligentsia ...was kept busy embroidering white stitches on the philosophical and ecclesiastical vestments of the bourgeoisie - that old and filthy fabric besmeared with the blood of toiling masses.

Their rage supplies them with weapons.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

The law always limits every power it gives.

The law is reason, free from passion.

The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything.

The learning and knowledge that we have,is,at the most,but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

The map is not the territory.

The media - and I'm not blaming them - obviously like to seize on the differences between people and, sure, there are some senior members of the government who are in a slightly different philosophical space to mine. But do not underestimate the substantial single-mindedness of this government.

The medicine increases the disease.

The message that 'love' will solve all of our problems is repeated incessantly in contemporary culture - like a philosophical tom tom. It would be closer to the truth to say that love is a contagious and virulent disease which leaves a victim in a state of near imbecility, paralysis, profound melancholia, and sometimes culminates in death.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

... the modern state masks itself in moral ideologies which obscure its actual conduct. One of the most compelling and insidious of these ideologies is the doctrine of natural rights. It was to secure these rights that the modern state was invented in the first place, and it is impossible, especially for Americans, not to be seduced by the doctrine. But it is nonetheless a philosophical superstition.

The moment philosophy supposes it can find a final and comprehensive solution, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes either apologetics or propaganda.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ....perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show.

the most common type of pessimism is neither philosophical nor religious: it is the pessimism of thwarted desire. ... It is the cynical sneer of the man who, seeking roses, finds only ashes.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakespeare, has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. A proper farce is mainly distinguished from comedy by the licence allowed, and even required, in the fable, in order to produce strange and laughable situations. The story need not be probable, it is enough that it is possible.

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.

The New Atheists are not open or willing to go where the evidence leads, unless that evidence sustains their own naturalistic assumptions. They have covertly reduced all philosophical thought and deduction to-- ironically-fait h!

The new statement will comprise the skepticisms, as well as the faiths of society, and out of unbeliefs a creed shall be formed. For, skepticisms are not gratuitous or lawless, but are limitations of the affirmative statement, and the new philosophy must take them in, and make affirmations outside of them, just as much as must include the oldest beliefs.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Then not only an old man, but also a drunkard, becomes a second time a child.

The now wherein God made the world is as near this time as the now I am speaking in this moment, and the last day is as near this now as was yesterday.

The old harlot, German philosophy, has finally turned into a church lady.

Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense.

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.

The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.

Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how to invent invention.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.

The philosophical anthropologist ... can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.

The philosophical I is not the human being, not the human body or the human soul with the psychological properties, but the metaphysical subject, the boundary (not a part) of the world.

The Phenomenon of Man stands square in the tradition of Naturphilosophie, a philosophical indoor pastime of German origin which does not seem even by accident (though there is a great deal of it) to have contributed anything of permanent value to the storehouse of human thought.

The philosopher caught in the nets of language.

The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. He does not confuse truth with plausibility, he takes for truth what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy.

The philosophical connection between the Islamic world and the West is much closer than I thought. Doubt did not begin with Descartes. We have this construction today that the West and Islam are entirely separate worlds. This is wrong.

The picture of Kant as the 'theological Robespierre' or the "world-crusher" was first suggested by someone with whom Kant stood in a relation of philosophical disagreement but also great mutual respect: namely, Moses Mendelssohn.

The plain fact is that there are no conclusions. If we must state a conclusion, it would be that many of the former conclusions of the nineteenth-century science on philosophical questions are once again in the melting-pot.

The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves itto the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.

The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry?

The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.