Philosopher Quotes - page 5

It often seems that the poet's derisive comment is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher: "With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches the gaps in the structure of the universe." (Sigmund Freud)
People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher - a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over. View quote
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things. View quote
Albert Einstein
By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound. View quote
Adam Smith
The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education. View quote
Adam Smith
467. I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy." View quote
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The fact is, every thinker, every philosopher, the moment he is forced to abandon his one-sided intellectual occupation by practical necessity, immediately returns to the general point of view of mankind. View quote
Ernst Mach
One could say that what differentiates ancient from modern philosophy is the fact that, in ancient philosophy, it was not only Chrysippus or Epicurus who, just because they had developed a philosophical discourse, were considered philosophers. Rather, every person who lived according to the precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus was every bit as much a philosopher as they. View quote
Pierre Hadot
A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else. View quote
Mark Forsyth
Suppose I was researching, not the life of some genius philosopher with his books and articles and a wake of articulate friends and acquaintances, but rather, a homeless kid in and out of mental hospitals for chronic masturbation and indecent exposure?...How would I even start? View quote
Samuel R. Delany
I would like to be a philosopher in ancient Athens and a poet in ancient China. (Shan Sa)
A philosopher is someone who says, "We know it's possible in practice; we're trying to work out if it's possible in principle!" View quote
Daniel Dennett
I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers. View quote
Daniel Dennett
Experience teaches...that there is no such thing as a thought experiment so clearly presented that no philosopher can misinterpret it... View quote
Daniel Dennett
The only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it. View quote
Christopher McDougall
Don't call me a mindless philosopher, you overweight glob of grease. View quote
Anthony Daniels
The picture which the philosopher draws of the world is surely not one in which every stroke is necessitated by pure logic. View quote
Morris Raphael Cohen
Camus believed in dialogue and diplomacy, and enlisted his work as a philosopher to the need to find nonviolent solutions, whereas Sartre called for violent conflicts and justified terror. View quote
Michel Onfray
The principle of laissez-faire may be safely trusted to in some things but in many more it is wholly inapplicable; and to appeal to it on all occasions savors more of the policy of a parrot than of a statesman or a philosopher. View quote
John Ramsay McCulloch
Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic. View quote
Hu Shih
A woman finds the natural lay of the land almost unconsciously; and not feeling it incumbent on her to be guide and philosopher to any successor, she takes little pains to mark the route by which she is making her ascent. (Alice Stone Blackwell)
A philosopher once said, 'Half of good philosophy is good grammar.' View quote
Aloysius Martinich
It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity. View quote
Ariel Durant
Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic. View quote
Brit Marling
As a philosopher, I'm not obliged to explore every unknown wilderness. View quote
Harry Frankfurt