Philosophy Quotes

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

Sydney Harris

Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Kahlil Gibran

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

John W. Gardne

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

Henry Mille

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 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

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

Karl Marx

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 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

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

Ayn Rand

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

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

Victor Cousin

The agenda of the roadblock is the philosophy of the stop sign.

George W. Bush, Speech (2005)

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

Epictetus

Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.

Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Grimm Grotto

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

Henry Ward Beeche

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

Oscar Wilde

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, Discourses

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

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Yann Martel, Life of Pi

History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology.

James A. Garfield

History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning its two eyes are geography and chronology.

James A. Garfield

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

Eugene Delacroix

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Henry David Thoreau

You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

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

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

Victor Cousin

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

William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 1 scene 5

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

For academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.

Battaille

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

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

William Shakespeare

On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world - Art, or philosophy, or learning - Regions where the years are scarcely noticed and the young and old can meet in a pale truthful light.

Freya Stark

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

Margaret Thatche

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

Anonymous

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

Henry St. John Bolingbroke