Quotes About Philosophy

The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in my belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either. Both mind and matter seem to be composite, and the stuff of which they are compounded lies in a sense between the two, in a sense above them both, like a common ancestor.

The 'practical' man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only the material needs, who realizes that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind.

proper task of philosophy is to remind ourselves of what we already know to be true:

Any logically coherent body of doctrine is sure to be in part painful and contrary to current prejudices

them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

Os conceitos da vida e do mundo que chamamos filosóficos são produto de dois fatores: um, constituído de fatores religiosos e éticos herdados; o outro, pela espécie de investigação que podemos denominar científica, empregando a palavra em seu sentido mais amplo.

In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories, and only then a revival of the critical attitude, which should resemble, as far as possible, the state of mind of a person abandoning opinions which he has hitherto held. Contempt interferes with the first part of this process, and reverence with the second.

The Orphics, unlike the priests of Olympian cults, founded what we may call 'churches', i.e. religious communities to which anybody, without distinction of race or sex, could be admitted by initiation, and from their influence arose the conception of philosophy as a way of life.

Ahlakla ilgili olarak, büyük çapta, kiÅŸinin bu terimden ne anlad???na baÄŸl?d?r. Bana göre, önemli erdemler iyi yüreklilik ve zekâd?r. Her türlü inanç zekây? köstekler; günah ve ceza inanc? da iyi yürekliliÄŸi engeller.

at first sight it might be thought that knowledge might be defined as belief which is in agreement with the facts. The trouble is that no one knows what a belief is, no one knows what a fact is, and no one knows what sort of agreement between them would make a belief true.

But if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all? And if so, have we any means of finding out what it is like?

Whoever wishes to see the world truly, to rise in thought above the tyranny of practical desires, must learn to overcome the difference of attitude towards past and future, and to survey the whole stream of time in one comprehensive vision.

The goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body.

There is no reason, therefore, so far as I am able to perceive, to deny the ultimate and absolute philosophical validity of a theory of geometry which regards space as composed of points, and not as a mere assemblage of relations between non-spatial terms.

Plato's Socrates had argued that to inflict injustice was a greater evil to the perpetrator than to suffer it.

The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom and impartiality in the world of action and emotion.

nor do I think that my scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity.

Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.

to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.

Those who maintain that mind is the reality and matter an evil dream are called idealists—a word which has a different meaning in philosophy from that which it bears in ordinary life. Those who argue that matter is the reality and mind a mere property of protoplasm are called materialists.

Fear of death is not wisdom, since no one knows whether death may not be the greater good.

We are uttering a mere tautology if we mean by 'in the mind' the same as by 'before the mind', i.e. if we mean merely being apprehended by the mind.

When an individual partakes of an idea, the individual and the idea are similar; therefore there will have to be another idea, embracing both the particulars and the original idea. And there will have to be yet another, embracing the particulars and the two ideas... ad infinitum. Thus every idea, instead of being one, becomes an infinite series of ideas.

If men were rational, they would take a more correct view of their own interest than they do at present; and if all men acted from enlightened self-interest the world would be a paradise in comparison with what it is. I do not maintain that there is nothing better than self-interest as a motive to action; but I do maintain that self-interest, like altruism, is better when it is enlightened than when it is unenlightened.