Best 1483 quotes in «philosopher quotes» category

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

Good comedians are great philosophers.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like the idea of being a postmodern moral philosopher - or perhaps a perverse moral 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 so why should I provide anyone with the answers? I'm just a musician, I don't have any solutions. All I'm doing is questioning the status quo, with every record I've made, to a certain extend.

I'm a slumdog philosopher.

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

Indeed, the distribution of wealth is too important an issue to be left to economists, sociologists, historians, and philosophers.

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.

Independence is the outstanding characteristic of the runner.

In Iran, the women are like Italian women, they rule the house inside. But it's full of life. The history is very rich. The mystic of the Middle Ages. We have to learn from them. They influence all the philosophers when they came to Europe all those many many years ago.

I never went into aesthetics. Aesthetics is what philosophers have to say about art, and a lot of them take an analytics position and raise the question, "What is an art object?" As soon as you fall into that trap, an artist is going to come along and say, "That isn't art - it's something else." That's a hopeless gig.

Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.