PHILOSOPHY QUOTES III
quotations about philosophy
Shall I show you the sinews of a philosopher? "What sinews are those?" -- A will undisappointed; evils avoided; powers daily exercised, careful resolutions; unerring decisions.
EPICTETUS
Discourses
The process of philosophizing, to my mind, consists mainly in passing from those obvious, vague, ambiguous things, that we feel quite sure of, to something precise, clear, definite, which by reflection and analysis we find is involved in the vague thing that we start from, and is, so to speak, the real truth of which that vague thing is a sort of shadow.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
When philosophy has gone as far as she is able, she arrives at almightiness, and in that labyrinth is lost; where, not knowing the way, she goes on by guess, and cannot tell whether she is right or wrong.... She runs into Omnipotency; and, like a petty river, is swallowed in that boundless main.
OWEN FELLTHAM
Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political
In every philosophical discussion, conclusions turn on intuitions about what's right or wrong, plausible or implausible, something one would or would not say. Philosophy needs psychological experiments to understand how we're arriving at our conclusions.
JOSHUA GREENE
"Philosophers are using science and data points to test theories of morality", Quartz, March 28, 2016
In philosophy an individual is becoming himself.
BERNARD LONERGAN
attributed, Dictionary of Quotations
These philosophers, then, whom we see not undeservedly exalted above the rest in fame and glory, have seen that no material body is God, and therefore they have transcended all bodies in seeking for God.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
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 cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject.
ERNEST GELLNER
Words and Things
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
A true philosopher is married to wisdom; he needs no other bride.
PROCLUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Philosophy has its bugbears, as well as superstition.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
Egeria: or Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods and Wayside
You can't do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.
MAXIM GORKY
The Zykovs
Your philosophy is what you know, how you hold it, and how it affects what you do.
COLIN NYATHI
"The power of compound effort", NewsDay, April 27, 2016
Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
You could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
Egeria: or Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods and Wayside
Philosophy is no longer a field conducted entirely from the comfort of an armchair. Over the past decade, this notoriously abstract discipline has developed a branch of "experimental philosophy" that conducts its own scientific studies. Though such work continues to face resistance from conventional armchair philosophers, there's an increasing focus on using empirical studies in conjunction with philosophical thinking: One survey found that 62% of highly cited papers from 1960-1999 used a priori (purely reason-based) methods. From 2009 to 2013, just 12% of comparably cited papers used a priori thinking alone.
OLIVIA GOLDHILL
"Philosophers are using science and data points to test theories of morality", Quartz, March 28, 2016
Philosophy is not the owl of Minerva that takes flight after history has been realized in order to celebrate its happy ending; rather, philosophy is subjective proposition, desire, and praxis that are applied to the event.
MICHAEL HARDT & ANTONIO NEGRI
Empire
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