Best 15727 quotes in «philosophy quotes» category

Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.

Personal philosophy: Clothing optional

PESSIMISM- philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.

Philosophers are as jealous as women; each wants a monopoly of praise.

Philosophers are never happy here. Now is not their time, and here is not their space. They live there, they live somewhere else.

Philosophers should be, as Seneca put it, 'lawyers for humanity'. Make what you think and feel count; the examined life has global dimensions.

Pessimism is an emotion not a philosophy.

Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it is a philosophical method, a tool. It is like an adjustable spanner that can be used for dismantling a refrigerator or a car, or used for hammering in nails, or even for knocking somebody out.

Philosophers feel a little more cautious about letting down their technical guard lest the general public doesn't recognize their special credentials. It's the fact that philosophy is of general interest that, paradoxically, keeps philosophers from wanting to speak in a way that's accessible to the general public.

Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.

Philosophers make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high.

Philosophical argument, trying to get someone to believe something whether he wants to believe it or not, is not, I have held, a nice way to behave towards someone; also it does not fit the original motivation for studying or entering philosophy. That motivation is puzzlement, curiousity, a desire to understand, not a desire to produce uniformity of belief. Most people do not want to become thought-police. The philosophical goal of explanation rather than proof not only is morally better, it is more in accord with one's philosophical motivation.

Philosophizing is a process of making sense out of experience.

Philosophy alone makes the mind invincible, and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us.

Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?

Philosophy appears to some people as a homogenous milieu: there thoughts are born and die, there systems are built, and there, in turn, they collapse. Others take Philosophy for a specific attitude which we can freely adopt at will. Still others see it as a determined segment of culture. In our view Philosophy does not exist.

Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.

Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.

Philosophy as science, as serious, rigorous, indeed apodictically rigorous science -- the dream is over.

Philosophers call God the great unknown The great misknown is more like it!

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

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

Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects, not in order to rest content with a lazy scepticism, but in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise and self-consistent.

Philosophy begins with the understanding that you cannot just observe or experience and then report what you see, because how you conceptualize and symbolize alters experience.

Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can't see anything.

Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one.

Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of its inmost shrine; her dictates descend among men, but she herself descends not : whoso would behold her must climb with long and laborious effort, nay, still linger in the forecourt, till manifold trial have proved him worthy of admission into the interior solemnities.

Philosophy exists in profoundest opposition to rhetoric, which is speaking for the sake of producing or controlling some effect in others' perceptions. Philosophy is about the caustic or cauterizing effect of the truth, not the currying of sensibilities.

Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.

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

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death; a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched.

Philosophy is a bad master for poetry; religion worse; and politics self-serving will never serve the Muse.

Philosophy is a corrective against sadness. Yet there still are people who believe in the profundity of philosophy!

Philosophy is an amazing tissue of really fine thinking and incredible, puerile mistakes. It's like one of those rubber 'bones' they give dogs to chew, damned good for the mind's teeth, but as food - no bloody good at all.

Philosophy is a necessary activity because we, all of us, take a great number of things for granted, and many of these assumptions are of a philosophical character; we act on them in private life, in politics, in our work, and in every other sphere of our lives -- but while some of these assumptions are no doubt true, it is likely, that more are false and some are harmful. So the critical examination of our presuppositions -- which is a philosophical activity -- is morally as well as intellectually important.

Philosophy is antipoetic. Philosophize about mankind and you brush aside individual uniqueness, which a poet cannot do without self-damage. Unless, for a start, he has a strong personal rhythm to vary his metrics, he is nothing. Poets mistrust philosophy. They know that once the heads are counted, each owner of a head loses his personal identify and becomes a number in some government scheme: if not as a slave or serf, at least as a party to the device of majority voting, which smothers personal views.

Philosophy is based on speculation, on logic, on thought, on the synthesis of what we know and on the analysis of what we do not know. Philosophy must include within its confines the whole content of science, religion and art.

Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.

Philosophy is not politics, and we do our best, within our all-too-human limitations, to seek the truth, not to score points against opponents. There is little satisfaction in gaining an easy triumph over a weak opponent while ignoring better arguments against your views.

Philosophy isn't programmed into us, and a lot of the forces of our culture steadfastly work against it. Philosophy, for me, is a way of resisting the nihilism of the present by making, creating, affirming. By going on.

Philosophy is regarded by many as inseparable from speculation. ... Philosophy has proceeded from speculation to science.

Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the white at any distance.

Philosophy is the microscope of thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it.

Philosophy is true mother of the arts [of science].

Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.

Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.

Philosophical studies are beset by one peril, a person easily brings himself to think that he thinks; and a smattering of science encourages conceit. He is above his companions. A hieroglyphic is a spell. The gnostic dogma is cuneiform writing to the million. Moreover, the vain man is generally a doubter. It is Newton who sees himself in a child on the sea shore, and his discoveries in the colored shells.

Philosophical systems? Even the most impressive of them are uncomfortably seated on a throne of rock bottom stupidity, that self-inflicted narrow-mindness which renders a mind capable of believing that it, a part of the immense world, could absolute