Philosophy Quotes

And this activity alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while from practical activities we gain more or less apart from the action. And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace

Aristotle

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

Bertrand Russell

If you've never met a student from the University of Chicago, I'll describe him to you. If you give him a glass of water, he says, "This is a glass of water. But is it a glass of water? And if it is a glass of water, why is it a glass of water?" And eventually he dies of thirst.

Shelley Berman

Philosophy is a state of fermentation, a process without final outcome

Esa Saarinen

Religion is a man using a divining rod. Philosophy is a man using a pick and shovel

Unknown

I also realized that the philosophers, far from ridding me of my vain doubts, only multiplied the doubts that tormented me and failed to remove any one of them. So I chose another guide and said, Let me follow the Inner Light; it will not lead me so far astray as others have done, or if it does it will be my own fault, and I shall not go so far wrong if I follow my own illusions as if I trusted to their deceits

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Learning Zen is a phenomenon of gold and dung. Before you understand it, it's like gold; after you understand it, it's like dung

Zen Saying

Philosophy cannot raise the commonalty up to her level: so, if she is to become popular, she must sink to theirs

Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Bertrand Russell

This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

Bertrand Russell

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.

Cicero

I went off to college planning to major in math or philosophy-- of course, both those ideas are really the same idea.

Frank Wilczek

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.

H. L. Mencken

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.

Rene Descartes

All philosophies, if you ride them, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

Samuel Butler

Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

Thomas Hobbes

True philosophy invents nothing; it merely establishes and describes what is

Victor Cousin

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

William James

Tell me what gives a man or woman their greatest pleasure and I'll tell you their philosophy of life.

Dale Carnegie

Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.

Karl Marx

Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Henry Brooks Adams

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Francis Bacon

Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny

Edward G. Bulwer

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