Philosophy Quotes

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.

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenb

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

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenb

The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.

Richard Rorty

A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.

Gertrude Stein

Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.

Soren Kierkegaard

Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make.

Gaston Bachelard

The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.

Sir Alfred Jules Ayer

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Blaise Pascal

The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.

Blaise Pascal

Philosophy is a bully that talks loud when the danger is at a distant; but, the moment she is pressed hard by an enemy, she is nowhere to be found and leaves the brunt of the battle to be fought by her steady, humble comrade, religion.

Charles Caleb Colton

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.

Anita Brookner

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

Wallace Stevens

Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.

Wallace Stevens

In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.

Timothy Leary, "Evening Standard

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.

George Bernard Shaw