Philosophy Quotes

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to enduring fact of mystery.

Henry Mille

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy To get rid of self - Conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

Epictetus

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

Victor Cousin

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 of Logical Atomism

Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex.

Karl Marx

All philosophy lies in two words Sustain and Abstain.

Epictetus

Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of the good way of life.

Eugene Delacroix

Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

Thomas Hobbes

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

Margaret Thatche

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

John W. Gardne

Life is a gift of the immortal Gods, but living well is the gift of philosophy.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... it has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival.

C. S. Lewis

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Albert Camus

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

Aristotle

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

John Adams

All serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy.

Ernest Dimnet

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils but present evils triumph over it.

La Rochefoucauld

Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.

Sydney Harris

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Aristotle, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

Epictetus

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men... the master of superstition is the people and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reverse order.

Francis Bacon

Histories make men wise poets, witty the mathematics, subtle natural philosophy, deep moral, grave logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Francis Bacon

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

Victor Cousin

I have gained this by philosophy that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Aristotle

Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.

Margaret Thatche

A great philosophy is not one that passes final judgments and establishes ultimate truth. It is one that causes uneasiness and starts commotion.

Charles Peguy

Philosophy is the highest music.

Plato

Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.

Anonymous

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Henry David Thoreau

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

Isaac Asimov

The most important principle of divine philosophy is the oneness of the world of humanity, the unity of mankind, the bond conjoining East and West, the tie of love which blends human hearts.

Abdul Baha, April 19, 1912, Earl Hall

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.

Ludwig van Beethoven

The incomparable stupidity of life teaches us to love our parents divine philosophy teaches us to forgive them.

Baron de la Brede et de Montesquieu

Friendship is not necessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Clive Staples Lewis

Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others.

Oscar Wilde

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the real world since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.

Giacomo Leopardi