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| When I study philosophical works I feel I am swallowing something which I don’t have in my mouth. ~ Albert Einstein |
| Philosophy is nothing but common sense in a dress suit. ~ Author Unknown |
| Get married, in any case. If you happen to get a good mate, you will be happy; if a bad one, you will become philosophical, which is a fine thing in itself. ~ Socrates, in Diogenes Laertius, |
| When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics. ~ Voltaire, |
| We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy. ~ Martin L. Gross, |
| 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 |
| Leisure is the mother of Philosophy. ~ Thomas Hobbes, |
| Philosophy is just a hobby. You can’t open a philosophy factory. ~ Dewey Selmon |
| The natural philosophers are mostly gone. We modern scientists are adding too many decimals. ~ Martin H. Fischer |
| God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please – you can never have both. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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| My definition [of a philosopher] is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down. ~ Louisa May Alcott, in |
| Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. ~ Alfred North Whitehead |
| If everybody contemplates the infinite instead of fixing the drains, many of us will die of cholera. ~ John Rich |
| All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. ~ Ambrose Bierce, |
| Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that the far greater part, if not all, of those difficulties which have hitherto amused philosophers, and blocked up the way to knowledge, are entirely owing to our selves. That we have first raised a dust, and then complain, we cannot see. ~ George Berkeley |
| To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both – a philosopher. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche |
| 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, |
| Being a philosopher, I have a problem for every solution. ~ Robert Zend |
| Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck. ~ Immanuel Kant |
| Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations. ~ Aldous Huxley, |
| Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures. ~ Nicolas Chamfort, |
| 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 |
| To teach how to live with uncertainty, yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy can do. ~ Bertrand Russell |
| Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings. ~ John Keats |
| 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 |
| What is the first business of philosophy? To part with self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn what he thinks that he already knows. ~ Epictetus, |
| Philosophy is a state of fermentation, a process without final outcome. ~ Esa Saarinen |
| To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize. ~ Blaise Pascal, |
| We come late, if at all, to wine and philosophy: whiskey and action are easier. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, |
Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine -
Unweave a rainbow.
~ John Keats |