Philosopher Quotes - page 2

Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance. (Bertrand Russell)
An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet. View quote
Bertrand Russell
The essayist ... can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast. View quote
E. B. White
Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man. View quote
David Hume
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. View quote
H. L. Mencken
The philosopher ... subjects experience to his critical judgment, and this contains a value judgment namely, that freedom from toil is preferable to toil, and an intelligent life is preferable to a stupid life. It so happened that philosophy was born with these values. Scientific thought had to break this union of value judgment and analysis, for it became increasingly clear that the philosophic values did not guide the organisation of society. View quote
Herbert Marcuse
He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king. View quote
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet. View quote
Karl Jaspers
If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically. View quote
Jean-Paul Sartre
Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. View quote
Thomas Aquinas
A philosopher is, no doubt, entitled to examine even those distinctions that are to be found in the structure of all languages... in that case, such a distinction may be imputed to a vulgar error, which ought to be corrected in philosophy. (Thomas Reid)
No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms. View quote
P. F. Strawson
I keep reverting (to Duke Ellington), he to me is the greatest ever and my favorite jazz philosopher, as such. View quote
Cannonball Adderley
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers. View quote
William James
How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can only be conjectured...No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveller in a musical heaven, a mad insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer... View quote
Harry J. Anslinger
Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all. View quote
Marcus Aurelius
I have always thought that clarity is a form of courtesy that the philosopher owes; moreover, this discipline of ours considers it more truly a matter of honor today than ever before to be open to all minds ... This is different from the individual sciences which increasingly [interpose] between the treasure of their discoveries and the curiosity of the profane the tremendous dragon of their closed terminology. View quote
José Ortega y Gasset
I think that the philosopher must, for his own purposes, carry methodological strictness to an extreme when he is investigating and pursuing his truths, but when he is ready to enunciate them and give them out, he ought to avoid the cynical skill with which some scientists, like a Hercules at the fair, amuse themselves by displaying to the public the biceps of their technique. View quote
José Ortega y Gasset
A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading. View quote
Leszek Kołakowski
The philosophy which affects to teach us a contempt of money does not run very deep; for, indeed, it ought to be still more clear to the philosopher than it is to ordinary men, that there are few things in the world of greater importance. View quote
Henry Taylor
The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence. (Wallace Stevens)
The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward. View quote
William Makepeace Thackeray
A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject. View quote
Ernest Gellner
When we seek a textbook case for the proper operation of science, the correction of certain error offers far more promise than the establishment of probable truth. Confirmed hunches, of course, are more upbeat than discredited hypotheses. Since the worst traditions of "popular” writing falsely equate instruction with sweetness and light, our promotional literature abounds with insipid tales in the heroic mode, although tough stories of disappointment and loss give deeper insight into a methodology that the celebrated philosopher Karl Popper once labeled as "conjecture and refutation.”. View quote
Stephen Jay Gould
When you want to hear a philosopher, do not say, 'You say nothing to me'; only show yourself worthy or fit to hear, and then you will see how you will move the speaker. (81). View quote
Epictetus