Quotes About Philosophy

The secret of happiness is this: let your interest be as wide as possible and let your reactions to the things and persons who interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

Sin is geographical.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. I think, therefore I am says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.

Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.

I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.

Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.

The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.

Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.

This [Hegel's philosophy] illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.

Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

Man is a rational animal. So at least we have been told. Throughout a long life I have searched diligently for evidence in favor of this statement. So far, I have not had the good fortune to come across it.

Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth' ... Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory – it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe ... I think most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been the result of such a moment.

The trouble arises from the generally received philosophy of life, according to which life is a contest, a competition, in which respect is to be a ccorded to the victor. This view leads to an undue cultivation of the will at the expense of the senses and the intellect.

I do not myself think there is any superior rationality in being unhappy. The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.

on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out. I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good. Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging to the infancy of human reason, and to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing.