Quotes About Philosophy

Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations. And nothing is more desolating than a thorough knowledge of the private self.

Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.

The only difference between graffiti and philosophy is the word "[f*@%]."

And the poet out-argues Nature.

What is poetry but impassioned truth — philosophy in its essence — the spirit of that bright consummate flower, whose root is in our bosoms?

Poetry staggers, drunken but wise, amongst the stars. Philosophy plots its own steady course to the sun.

The modern conservative is not even especially modern. He is engaged, on the contrary, in one of man's oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities.

A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.

Religion & Philosophy. — Religion is a man using a divining rod. Philosophy is a man using a pick and shovel.

Fortune Cookies. — Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies.

Proverbs are the literature of reason.

I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness — a real thoroughgoing illness.

There is no way you can use the word "reality" without quotation marks around it.

The teachings of elegant sayings Should be collected when one can. For the supreme gift of words of wisdom, Any price will be paid.

But I can't forbear quoting the Advice of a great Author...

The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well.

An aphorism is never exactly true. It is either a half-truth or a truth and a half.

As the highly colored birds do not fly around in the dull, leaden plains of a sandy desert, but amid all the settings of nature's leaves and blossoms, and lights and shades—nature's framework of their picture—so there are truths which do not appear well in arid fields of philosophic inquiry, but which demand the colored air and the bowers of poetry to be the setting of their charms.

I wish the first word I ever said was the word "quote" so right before I die I could say "unquote."

...human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.

REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher.

REALITY, n. The nucleus of a vacuum.

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

Religion is being locked in and you can't get out; atheism, the other side of the door.