Best 1483 quotes in «philosopher quotes» category

For centuries many of the world's distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as being irrational, superstitious and absurd.

For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.

For us scientists, on the other wing, life is not quite so simple. Because we learn the unknown. Unlike, hah-hah, our esteemed friends the philosophers, who learn the unknowable.

For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.

Funest philosophers and ponderers, Their evocations are the speech of clouds.

For they, the philosophers, were considered teachers of right living, which is far more excellent, since to speak well belongs only to a few, but to live well belongs to all.

God created man in His own image, says the Bible; philosophers reverse the process: they create God in theirs.

Good comedians are great philosophers.

Hold fast, therefore, O circular philosopher, to thy centre, and drive the globe along its orbit by the momentum of thy thought.

He who esteems trifles for themselves is a trifler; he who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher.

He raged for hours. And the skeleton, ever the frail and solelmn philosopher, hung quietly inside, saying not a word, suspended like a delicate insect within a chrysalis, waiting and waiting.

How do our philosophers act? Do they not inscribe their signatures to the very essays they write on the propriety of despising glory.

Honor to the idealists, whether philosophers or poets. They have improved us by mingling with our daily pursuits great and transcendent conceptions. They have thrown around our sensual life the grandeur of a better, and drawn us up from contacts with the temporal and the selfish to communion with beauty and truth and goodness.

How something important happens is the business of historians and newspapers, the effect it has is the business of philosophers and writers and especially poets.

Humour is human. Why? Well, because the Philosopher, Aristotle, says so.

He who has lived as a true philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to receive the greatest good in the other world.

I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgment of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavour to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God.

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.

I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.

I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.

I consider myself a 3-D philosopher. I am not a designer at all. I studied aerodynamics, I studied philosophy, I studied sculpture. High technology on one side, and on the other side, art.

I could never teach people to be philosophers - and if I did, you could never make a gardener out of them.

I call myself an experimental philosopher which is as ambiguous a term as comprehensive anticipatory design scientist.

I do not seek the good of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or their destruction of my life.

I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller.

Ideal goals are a menace in themselves, as much in more modern philosophers as in Plato.

I do realise that talk of natural kinds dates back to Aristotle, but I'd better not say too much about ancient philosophers lest I be convicted of practicing history of philosophy without a license.

I don't pretend to be an intellectual or a philosopher. I just look.

I fear that, in the end, the famous debate among materialists, idealists, and dualists amounts to a merely verbal dispute that is more a matter for the linguist than for the speculative philosopher

If there is ever an amelioration of the condition of mankind, philosophers, theologians, legislators, politicians and moralists will find that the regulation of the press is the most difficult, dangerous and important problem they have to resolve. Mankind cannot now be governed without it, nor at present with it.

I don't see myself as a philosopher. That's awfully boring.

I feel that we are all philosophers, and that those who describe themselves as a 'philosopher' simply do not have a day job to go to.

If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers.

If you wish to understand a philosopher, do not ask what he says, but find out what he wants

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.

If true happiness depended on the thoughts of man, then all philosophers and deep thinkers would be filled to overflowing with it.

I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher.

I have never come across someone who could inspire more respect than the Greek philosophers.

I have lived as a philosopher and die as a Christian.

I have to say that some philosophers such as the late Bernard Williams, and I would include myself in this group, would say that tranquillity is overrated as the goal of life.

I have a general moral: great philosophers may be great, but that is not a reason to follow them. Don't be a follower. Work it out for yourself.

I leaf through the ancient philosophers and find my newest discoveries there.

I have said my philosophy - I'm a backyard philosopher, I guess - is that the dirtiest word in the English language is "retirement.

I like both slapstick and contradiction. Like philosophers.

I'm a slumdog philosopher.

I mean it as a compliment when I say that you could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer.

I'm not a philosopher. I am the next thing to a jock, which is a novelist.

I'm not a minister, I'm not a philosopher, I'm not a politician, I'm in another category.

I'm not sure that I 'am' a philosopher - but I do engage with questions that are generally recognized as philosophical questions, such as the character of human existence and what makes for a good human life.

I like the idea of being a postmodern moral philosopher - or perhaps a perverse moral philosopher.