Quotes About Philosophy

Voler une ombre, dépouiller un souvenir, est-ce vraiment voler ?

I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.

It is best not to go on for great quest for truth , it will only make you miserable

When I turn my mind's eye upon myself, I understand that I am a thing which is incomplete and dependent on another and which aspires without limit to ever greater and better things...

The dreams we imagine when we are asleep should not in any way make us doubt the truth of the thoughts we have when we are awake.

The destruction of the foundations necessarily brings down the whole edifice.

For the very fact that my knowledge is increasing little by little is the most certain argument for its imperfection.

And what more am I? I look for aid to the imagination. [But how mistakenly!] I am not that assemblage of limbs we call the human body; I am not a subtle penetrating air distributed throughout all these members; I am not a wind, a fire, a vapor, a breath or anything at all that I can image. I am supposing all these things to be nothing. Yet I find, while so doing, that I am still assured that I am a something.

Am I so tied to a body and senses that I am incapable of existing without them?

I had become aware, as early as my college days, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible can be imagined, that has not been held by one of the philosophers.

It cannot be denied that he has had many exceptional ideas, and that he is a highly intelligent man. For my part, however, I have always been taught to take a broad overview of things, in order to be able to deduce from them general rules, which might be applicable elsewhere.

When it is not in our power to determine what it true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

Mind and soul of the man is entirely different from the body.

I took especially great pleasure in mathematics because of the certainty and the evidence of its arguments.

I am not a collection of members which we call the human body: I am not a subtle air distributed through these members, I am not a wind, a fire, a vapour, a breath, nor anything at all which I can imagine or conceive; because I have assumed that all these were nothing. Without changing that supposition I find that I only leave myself certain of the fact that I am somewhat.

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt

Je pense, donc je suis; English: I think, therefore I am)

To think? That's it. It is thought. This alone cannot be detached from me. I am, I exist; that is certain.

all that is necessary to right action is right judgment, and to the best action the most correct judgment

Like a prisoner who dreams that he is free, starts to suspect that it is merely a dream, and wants to go on dreaming rather than waking up, so I am content to slide back into my old opinions; I fear being shaken out of them because I am afraid that my peaceful sleep may be followed by hard labour when I wake, and that I shall have to struggle not in the light but in the imprisoning darkness of the problems I have raised.

To attain the truth in life, we must discard all the ideas we were taught.

I resolv'd to faign, that all those things which ever entred into my Minde, were no more true, then the illusions of my dreams.

we ought not meanwhile to make use of doubt in the conduct of life.

And even though we have read all the arguments of Plato and Aristotle, we shall never become philosophers if we are unable to make a sound judgement on matters which come up for discussion; in this case what we would seem to have learnt would not be science but history.