PHILOSOPHY QUOTES II
quotations about philosophy
Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.
WILLIAM JAMES
Some Problems of Philosophy
What we philosophers can do is just correct the questions.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
interview, New Statesman, October 8, 2013
The main business of natural philosophy is to argue from phenomena without feigning hypothesis, and to deduce causes from effects till we come to the very first cause, which certainly is not mechanical; and not only to unfold the mechanism of the world, but chiefly to resolve these, and to such like questions.
ISAAC NEWTON
A Treatise on Physics
Among all the characters of mankind, that of the Philosopher is the most perfect. Distinguished from those of the inferior kind, by clearer and more distinct perceptions; by more comprehensive views of both nature and art; by a more ardent love and higher admiration of what is excellent; by a firmer attachment to virtue, and the general good of the world; by a lower regard for all inferior beauties compared with the supreme, consisting in rectitude of conduct and dignitude of behaviour; by a greater moderation in prosperity, and greater patience and courage under the evils of life; the real Philosopher, though not absolutely perfect, sets the grandeur of human genius in the fairest light.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Philosophy has never been anything but a disavowal of the reality principle.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Cool Memories
Philosophy must indeed recognize the possibility that the people rise to it, but must not lower itself to the people.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
attributed, Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy
The wisdom of philosophy is set in opposition to the common sense of mankind. The first pretends to demonstrate, a priori, that there can be no such thing as a material world; that sun, moon, stars, and earth, vegetable and animal bodies, are, and can be nothing else, but sensations in the mind, or images of those sensations in the memory and imagination; that, like pain and joy, they can have no existence when they are not thought of. The last can conceive no otherwise of this opinion, than as a kind of metaphysical lunacy, and concludes that too much learning is apt to make men mad; and that the man who seriously entertains this belief, though in other respects he may be a very good man, as a man may be who believes that he is made of glass; yet, surely he hath a soft place in his understanding, and hath been hurt by much thinking.
THOMAS REID
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
Our life is philosophy, and conversely, philosophy is life.
LANUSANGLA TZUDIR
Eastern Mirror, March 29, 2016
Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook C", Aphorisms
Civilizations ultimately run on ideas, and societies that want to prosper should, so to speak, work out them out, manipulating their intellectual muscles regularly.
PASCAL-EMMANUEL GOBRY
"France's strange, wonderful love affair with philosophy", The Week, April 18, 2016
The part of human philosophy which is rational is of all knowledges, to the most wits, the least delightful, and seemeth but a net of subtlety and spinosity. For as it was truly said, that knowledge is pabulum animi; so in the nature of men's appetite to this food most men are of the taste and stomach of the Israelites in the desert, that would fain have returned ad ollas carnium, and were weary of manna; which, though it were celestial, yet seemed less nutritive and comfortable. So generally men taste well knowledges that are drenched in flesh and blood, civil history, morality, policy, about the which men's affections, praises, fortunes do turn and are conversant. But this same lumen siccum doth parch and offend most men's watery and soft natures. But to speak truly of things as they are in worth, rational knowledges are the keys of all other arts, for as Aristotle saith aptly and elegantly, "That the hand is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms;" so these be truly said to be the art of arts. Neither do they only direct, but likewise confirm and strengthen; even as the habit of shooting doth not only enable to shoot a nearer shoot, but also to draw a stronger bow.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
Divine philosophy weeds from our breast by degrees full many a vice and every kind of error; she is the first to teach us what is right.
JUVENAL
attributed, Great Thoughts from Classic Authors
In philosophy an individual is becoming himself.
BERNARD LONERGAN
attributed, Dictionary of Quotations
We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves. Even if my philosophy does not extend to discovering anything new, it does nevertheless possess the courage to regard as questionable what has long been thought true.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook B", Aphorisms
When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Theory of Knowledge
A true philosopher is married to wisdom; he needs no other bride.
PROCLUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The maxim, "An unexamined life is not worth living," is the priceless legacy of Socrates to the generations of men who have followed him upon this earth. The beings who have stood on humanity's summit are those, and only those, who have heard the voice of Socrates across the centuries. The others are a superior kind of cattle.
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
lecture at Columbia University, March 4, 1908
The true philosopher is a brave spirit; dauntless to discover, and bold to declare the truth at all hazard. He feels the inner constraint of his messages, and, as a prophet to his day and generation, he must needs speak, though the whole world cry to him, silence.
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
The Problems of Philosophy
For Hume, skepticism about metaphysical subjects ended in an indolence born of seclusion. The only solution was to transfer the skeptical impulse in philosophy from the solitude of the study to the wider social world. Under these circumstances, skepticism fostered equanimity rather than discontent. In society, the true skeptic acknowledged the value of common sense without submitting slavishly to its whims. Skepticism in this context was profitable and enabling; it criticized without destroying the conditions of criticism, which depended on the existence of society and government. The positive results of criticism could be seen in society, politics, and morals. Philosophy could expose damaging ideas in ethics, unsocial attitudes in religion, and dangerous postures in politics.
RICHARD BOURKE
"Hume's Call to Action", The Nation, April 20, 2016
The philosopher places himself at the summit of thought; from there he views what the world has been and what it must become. He is not just an observer, he is an actor; he is an actor of the highest kind in a moral world because it is his opinion of what the world must become that regulates society.
HENRI DE SAINT-SIMON
Memoire sur la science de l'homme