Best 15727 quotes in «philosophy quotes» category

I am not sure just what Marx had in mind when he wrote that "philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." Did he mean that philosophy could change the world, or that philosophers should turn to the higher priority of changing the world? If the former, then he presumably meant philosophy in a broad sense of the term, including analysis of the social order and ideas about why it should be changed, and how. In that broad sense, philosophy can play a role, indeed an essential role, in changing the world.

I am operating under the philosophy that I will simply use what I need and the rest - even if I still have it somewhere - is not mine. It is others'. It is for the healing of the natural world. And it is in the process of returning.

I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.

I am opposing it with an idea of the history of philosophy as a history of philosophers, that is, a history of mortal, fragile and limited creatures like you and I. I am against the idea of clean, clearly distinct epochs in the history of philosophy or indeed in anything else. I think that history is always messy, contingent, plural and material. I am against the constant revenge of idealism in how we think about history.

I am the captain of my pain.

I am too good for philosophy and not good enough for physics. Mathematics is in between.

I am very Aristotelian in approach - not in detail - so I always find I'm saying things that get people frustrated like 'It's a matter of balance and judgement'. To a lot of philosophers these are terrible words because they're admitting of vagueness and uncertainty. The more I've done philosophy, the more I've become convinced that that is the way it is.

I arm myself with punch lines and a big old water gun.

I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought.

I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philosophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name 'em, I ate 'em.

I became an anti-fascist, and the more I saw what was happening to the peoples of Europe, the Jews, the more I saw the deep cruelty and inhumanity of that system and its philosophy of white supremacy.

I believe in a business boarding up early. If you make a mistake, you put the boards in the window of the store and say, "Hey, I made a mistake." Let me take two shots in the arm and a punch on the nose and let me get on to the next thing. I don't believe in worrying over failures. I worry about successes. This is opposite from most people. Most people zero in on their failures. I try to keep all my attention on a pyramid type philosophy rather than the averaging-down philosophy.

I believe if you want to convey a complex philosophy, its advisable to keep it simple: day-to-day lingo.

I believe in living each day as it comes, to the best of my ability. When it's done, I put it away, remembering that there will be a tomorrow to take it's place. If I have any philosophy, that's it. To me it's not a fatalistic attitude.

I believe in the Democratic party, and their philosophy and what they stand for - for the poor people.

I believe philosophy must go to school with the poets; it's not either/or, it's not over or against.

I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.

I believe that philosophy is part of literature, and not the reverse.

I believe that the time given to refutation in philosophy is usually time lost. Of the many attacks directed by many thinkers against each other, what now remains? Nothing, or assuredly very little. That which counts and endures is the modicum of positive truth which each contributes. The true statement is, of itself, able to displace the erroneous idea, and becomes, without our having taken the trouble of refuting anyone, the best of refutations.

I believe that white frame house is worthy of more than a nod of nostalgia, because the values President Clinton learned there and in Hope formed the core of his political philosophy.

I bought some books in order to learn the first principles of philosophy.

I bomb atomically, Socrates' philosophies and hypotheses Can't define how I be dropping these mockeries. Lyrically perform armed robbery, Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me.

I cannot be a teacher without exposing who I am.

I can remember picking up weighty tomes on the history of science and the history of philosophy and reading those when I was small.

I cannot name this, I cannot explain this, and I really don't want to so just call me shameless.

I can't convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.

I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.

I claimed to be the first person to adjust a vertebra by hand, using the spinous and transverse processes and levers. I developed the art known as adjusting, and formulated the science of chiropractic, and developed its philosophy.

I can't live my life under the sort of "I cannot fail" philosophy, because then every time I do fail, which feels more inevitable than me being perfect all the time, it's going to be soul crushing. And more importantly, I'll never take any risks.

I close my eyes and feel the universe within me.

I come from the philosophy of: "Whatever happens to me is the greatest thing that could happen, no matter what." Sometimes in the moment I have a regret, but then I have found myself every time down the line saying to myself: "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for that so called failure.

I comfortably can say that I am a Republican and I always will be a Republican because the Republican party is a big tent and there was not always things that I agreed with or they didn't agree with me many times. But the fact of the matter is that's the philosophy, and everything that I've heard is exactly the same.

I can't save them by myself, oh but God forbid that I just turn my head and walk on by. Don't let me be a stranger to those less fortunate than I.

I can't see my reflection in the waters, I can't speak the sounds that show no pain. I can't hear the echo of my footsteps, or can't remember the sound of my own name.

I challenge anybody to say that I wouldn't know how to approach foreign policy because, unlike some of the other people, I at least have a foreign policy philosophy, which is an extension of the Reagan philosophy. Peace through strength, and my philosophy is peace through strength and clarity.

I chose philosophy because it sounded like something I ought to be interested in. I didn't know anything about it, I didn't even know what it was talking about. What I really spent my time doing in those years was writing short stories. There were all sorts of interesting courses, but what I really wanted to do was make stories one way or another.

I conceive of nothing, in religion, science or philosophy, that is more than the proper thing to wear, for a while.

I come from a theater family and a theater background, and I come from a philosophy that you respect the space you occupy when you work and you put everything that you have into something.

I consider it an extremely dangerous doctrine, because the more likely we are to assume that the solution comes from the outside, the less likely we are to solve our problems ourselves.

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 identify for virtually every important figure in the history of modern continental philosophy an idea (or more than one) absolutely central to that philosopher's thought, whose original author was Fichte.

I could sum it up in one thing: A guy has to be what he is. He's got to coach and have a philosophy based on his own personality. You see too many coaches trying to imitate other coaches, trying to be someone else. It's all right to emulate the qualities of good coaches but I don't think you should imitate. You've got to be yourself.

Ideas and philosophies change just as machines do. Religions changed because of the birth control pill. Politics changes because of the hydrogen bomb. All because of science fictional inventions.

I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important.

I could have been you, you could have been me. One small change that shapes your destiny.

I created 'The Westerner' because of anger - anger at never-miss sheriffs, always-right marshalls, whitewashed gunfighters ... anger at TV's quick-draw tin gods who stand behind a tin star or ten cents' worth of righteous anger and justify their skill and slaughter with a self-conscious grin or a minute's worth of bad philosophy.

I decline to accept the end of man.

I decided to do philosophy at university, with a view to becoming a professional philosopher. Being a rather unstable character, at some points I had doubts about becoming a professional philosopher, but the example of two of my teachers, Ezequiel de Olaso and Juan Rodriguez Larreta, made me confirm my original decision.

Identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its future.

I did not intend to be a writer. I first wanted to be a lawyer, like my father. Then I got bit by the bug of philosophy and wanted to be a philosophy professor. I went to graduate school and quickly discovered it was impossible for a woman in those days - this was the early fifties - to be a philosopher, so I gave that up.