Best 1483 quotes in «philosopher quotes» category

Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.

Only the free-wheeling artist-explorer, non-academic, scientist-philosopher, mechanic, economist-poet who has never waited for patron-starting and accrediting of his co-ordinate capabilities holds the prime initiative today.

Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated about among men of thought.

Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of mathematicians, which has changed little from Pythagoras to our day.

Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.

Philosophers say man forms himself in dialogue.

Philosopher is becoming God in the process called life.

Philosophers can debate the meaning of life, but you need a Lord who can declare the meaning of life.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Philosophers of biology generally recognize that evolutionary fitness (roughly, an organism's ability to survive and reproduce in its environment) is multiply realizable.

Philosophers say that perfection is unattainable. Lithographers redefine perfection according to SEMI standards.

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

Philosophers ought to aspire to know lots of different things and to forge useful synthetic perspectives.

Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.

Philosophers are smart, analytical, and skeptical. For these reasons they are relatively unbiased.

Philosophy abounds more than philosophers, and learning more than learned men.

Philosophers are often actively disinterested in what happens between the cup and the lips (after all, that's "non-ideal theory").

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.

Philosophers, especially metaphysicians, explore features of reality and of our mental life that are different from those explored by scientists.

Philosophers say that nothing can be seen that is neither illuminated nor colored.

Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.

Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.

Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets.

Paul indeed wanted to reveal the unknown God to the philosophers and then affirms of Him, that no human intellect can conceive Him. Therefore, God is revealed therein, that one knows that every intellect is too small to make itself a figuration or concept of Him. However, he names him God, or in Greek, theos.

Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age.

Plato used to say to Xenocrates the philosopher, who was rough and morose, "Good Xenocrates, sacrifice to the Graces.

Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.

Port is not for the very young, the vain and the active. It is the comfort of age and the companion of the scholar and the philosopher

Pure draughtsmen are philosophers and dialecticians. Colourists are epic poets.

Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.

Problems come and go over time, and to understand why is a difficult historical task. If one wanted to find the origin of a problem, historical research and close attention to texts is what is needed, not unconstrained speculation about the 'pictures' that philosophers must be in the grip of.

Say, Not so, and you will out circle the philosophers.

Seneca brings vividly before us a picture of the various scholars assembled in a school of the philosophers.

Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics.

Shouldn't I join the ranks of philosophers and merely make unsubstantiated claims about the wonders of human consciousness? Shouldn't I stop trying to do some science and keep my head down? Indeed not.

Since the time of Plato and Aristotle philosophers have had an interest in taking note of common fallacies in reasoning.

Some great poet or philosopher once said that " he who goes to nature for comfort must go to her empty handed " , and I think he was right.

Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all. Bertha: What's that? Socrates: Philosophy. Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here. Socrates: Where are they? Bertha: In the philosophy department. Socrates: Philosophy is not department. Bertha: Well, we have philosophers. Socrates: Are they dangerous? Bertha: Of course not. Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers.

...somehow the old philosophers could make even the most salacious topics seem boring.

Sed nescio quo modo nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosphorum. (There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.)

Sometimes I suspect that there are two prototypes of philosophers who write about humans - I call them "celestials" and "terrestrials", without implying that celestials have their heads in the clouds or that terrestrials have theirs buried in the ground. The difference between these two types is not so much in their theories but in whether or not they would find it a very sad thing if it turned out that the only way a human is superior to a wolf is this: the human brain is significantly more capacious and complex.

Symbols and emblems were everywhere. Buildings and pictures were designed to be read like books. Everything stood for something else; if you had the right dictionary, you could read Nature itself. It was hardly surprising to find philosophers using the symbolism of their time to interpret knowledge that came from a mysterious source.

States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers.

Some philosophers see into themselves, and some into their times; still others forge an alliance with the future.

Suppose cats became philosophers, they would see a cat universe and have a cat solution of the problem of the universe, and a cat ruling it. So we see from this that our explanation of the universe is not the whole of the solution.

Take time for good books; time to absorb the thoughts of poets and philosophers, seers and prophets.

The best physician is also a philosopher.