Quotes About Philosophy

Tengo que estudiar la política y la guerra para que mis hijos tengan la libertad de estudiar matemáticas y filosofía. –John Adams

Age is of no importance unless you are a cheese.

However much I have frequented the mystics, deep down I have always sided with the Devil; unable to equal him in power, I have tried to be worthy of him, at least, in insolence, acrimony, arbitrariness and caprice.

If string theory is a mistake, it's not a trivial mistake. It's a deep mistake and therefore kind of worthy.

I don't believe in the afterlife, so I do think when somebody passes, it's worthy of note.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

Life is very difficult. One of the most ancient of religious ideas that emerges everywhere, I would say, is that life is essentially suffering.

If triangles had a god, they would give him three sides.

Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

Immortality is the negation of death. We do not usually speak about 'innatality' - about having not yet been born - yet this is something we would have to regard as the other aspect of the human soul. We are just as unborn as we are immortal.

If we did not have rational souls, we would not be able to believe.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence, it would be to doubt everything; and then what is life for?

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

I have a personal philosophy in life: If somebody else can do something that I'm doing, they should do it. And what I want to do is find things that would represent a unique contribution to the world - the contribution that only I, and my portfolio of talents, can make happen. Those are my priorities in life.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.

I almost became a political journalist, having worked as a reporter at the time of Watergate. The proximity to those events motivated me, when I wound up doing philosophy, to try to use it to move the public debate.

No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.

Philosophy wasn't about facts, it was about ideas. My first essay title was something like: 'How can you know what other people are thinking?' I thought, 'Wow, what an amazing thing.' I really thought deeply for the first time.