Quotes About Philosophy

Reason is man's imitation of divinity.

THERE IS A PLEASURE in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind," Bacon admonishes us, "and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt."2 Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.

What if the proper functioning of the intellect and philosophy is not the denial of the will (desire) but the coordination of desires into a united and harmonious will?

Laplace is reported to have said on his deathbed that science was mere trifling, and that nothing was real but love.

All political philosophy, Spinoza thins, must grow out of a distinction between the natural and the moral order...without law or social organization...might and right were one...The rights of states are now what the rights of individuals used to be (and still often are), that is, they are mights...among men, as mutual need begets mutual aid...passes into a moral order of rights. (Chapter on Spinoza, p.191/543)

Wherever philosophy arises, the moral health of the nation decays.

On his tombstone only three words were necessary:   HERE LIES VOLTAIRE

It was even a saying among the philosophers themselves that since learned men had appeared, honest men were nowhere to be found.

It is difficult to be enthusiastic about Aristotle, because it was difficult for him to be enthusiastic about anything. His motto is nil admirari - to admire or marvel at nothing.

The root of the greatest errors in philosophy lies in projecting our human purposes, criteria and preferences into the objective universe.

Philosophy, however, is for the few, whereas poetry is more useful to the people at large.

For statesmanship is a science and an art; one must have lived for it and been long prepared. Only a philosopher-king is fit to guide a nation. Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and wisdom and political leadership meet in the same man,... cities will never cease from ill, nor the human race (473). This is the key-stone of the arch of Plato's thought.

Bad and good are prejudices which the eternal reality cannot recognize;

It is not merely probable, it is certain that we shall never find a straight line that is not the shortest distance between two points.

Heaven and utopia are buckets in a well: when one goes down the other goes up; when religion declines Communism grows.

On his desk, when he died, there lay a paper on which he had written his last, and perhaps his most characteristic, sentences: "There is no conclusion. What has concluded that we might conclude in regard to it? There are no fortunes to be told and there is no advice to be given. Farewell.

We suffocate with uncoordinated facts; our minds are overwhelmed with science breeding and multiplying into specialistic chaos for want of synthetic thought and a unifying philosophy. We are all mere fragments of what a man might be.

It is perhaps the best fruit of philosophy that through it we unlearn the lesson of endless acquisition which an industrial environment so insistently repeats. "Philosophy directs us first to seek the goods of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied, or not much wanted."69 A bit of wisdom is a joy forever.

A catholic and far-sighted theory of the adjustment of the conflicting factors of life is philosophy.

Yet democracy is on the whole inferior to aristocracy.92 For it is based on a false assumption of equality; it "arises out of the notion that those who are equal in one respect (e.g., in respect of the law) are equal in all respects; because men are equally free they claim to be absolutely equal.

We shall never have any experience which we shall not interpret in terms of space and time and cause; but we shall never have any philosophy if we forget that these are not things, but modes of interpretation and understanding.

But something of the skepticism that injured my religious faith has overflowed into timid doubts of science

Life, says a fine Greek adage, is the gift of nature; but beautiful living is the gift of wisdom.)