Quotes About Philosophy

To be a philosophical Sceptic is the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian.

The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections, dissipate all its conclusions, and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian

it is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be.

All knowledge degenerates into probability.

I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.

Nothing appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

Beauty in things exists in the mind that contemplates them.

Be a philosopher, but amid all your philosophy be still a man.

No conclusion can be more agreable to scepticism than such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limites of human reason and capacity

And while the body is confined to one planet, along which it creeps with pain and difficulty; the thought can in an instant transport us into the most distant regions of the universe; or even beyond the universe, into the unbounded chaos, where nature is supposed to lie in total confusion. What never was seen, or heard or, may yet be conceived; not is any thing beyond the power of thought, except what implies as absolute contradiction.

the Roman Catholic Index of Prohibited Books, a list that came to include almost every significant work of post-medieval Western philosophy.

Nothing is more usual than for philosophers to encroach upon the province of grammarians; and to engage in disputes of words, while they imagine that they are handling controversies of the deepest importance and concern.

While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy, so agreeable to the natural vanity and curiosity of men; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.

What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'.

Beauty in things exits merely in the mind which contemplates them.

There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blamable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavor the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretense of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality.

That I am ready to throw all of my books and papers into the fire, and resolve never more to renounce the pleasure of life for the sake of reasoning and philosophy.

Long before we have reached the last steps of the argument leading to our theory, we are already in Fairyland

I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense, who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.

When we think back on our past sensations and feelings, our thought is a faithful mirror that copies its objects truly; but it does so in colours that are fainter and more washed-out than those in which our original perceptions were clothed.

Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

Reasonable men may be allowed to differ where no one can reasonably be positive: Opposite sentiments, even without any decision, afford an agreeable amusement; and if the subject be curious and interesting, the book carries us, in a manner, into company, and unites the two greatest and purest pleasures of human life: study and society.

How can anything that exists from eternity have a cause, since that relation implies a priority in time and a beginning of existence?

judgments. A mistake, therefore, of right may become a species