Philosophy Quotes

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

Francis Bacon

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

Henry St. John Bolingbroke

We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

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

C. S. Lewis

Philosophy is the highest music.

Plato

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

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

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

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

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Dalai Llama

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

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

There are now - A - Days professors of philosophy but not philosophers.

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

Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

Thomas Hobbes

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

James A. Garfield

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

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

Victor Cousin