Best 1483 quotes in «philosopher quotes» category

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 like both slapstick and contradiction. Like philosophers.

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

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

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

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

I'm a slumdog philosopher.

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 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.

Independence is the outstanding characteristic of the runner.

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 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.

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

In my view, only those who have had the courage to work through Lacan's anti-philosophy without faltering deserve to be called 'contemporary philosophers'.

It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.

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.

It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibniz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers.

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.

Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists.

It is easy to be a philosopher in academia, but it is very difficult to be a philosopher in life.

It is not meant that the artist, in arriving at truth, must follow the way of the scientist, or, in stating it, the way of the philosopher.

It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.

It is good to renew one's wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all.

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

It may be argued that peoples for whom philosophers legislate are always prosperous.

It is not probable that the reader will be satisfied with any of these solutions, and contemporary philosophers, even rationalistically minded ones, have on the whole agreed that no one has intelligibly banished the mystery of fact.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.

It's always amazed me how little attention philosophers, psychologists, or anyone else actually has paid to humor.

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

It's hard to put into words. Gorillas are not complainers. We're dreamers, poets, philosophers, nap takers.

It's very important to remember that the philosophers were social dissidents. They were social critics. The man in the street or woman in the street did not particularly cherish what they said. Socrates was killed.

It's the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.

It often seems that the poet's derisive comment is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher: “With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches the gaps in the structure of the universe.

It's usually best not to ask philosophers anything, precisely because they have the habit of what in the Persian language is called sanud: the profitless consideration of unsettling yet inconsequential things.

I want to be remembered as a poet, a peacemaker, and a philosopher who played.

I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers.

I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.

It was Schopenhauer who made me a philosopher. Real philosophy, I told my appalled colleagues at Auckland, is about sex, death, and boredom. Since then I have expanded my horizons, but I have always retained an affection for the sage of Frankfurt.

I will not die, it's the world that will end." paraphrase of unknown philosopher

Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher who celebrated the anguish of decision as a hallmark of responsibility, has no place in Silicon Valley.