Quotes About Philosopher

In the Middle Ages, as in Classical times, the academy possessed freedom unknown to other bodies and persons because the philosopher, the scholar, and the student were looked upon as men consecrated to the service of the Truth; and that Truth was not simply a purposeless groping after miscellaneous information , but a wisdom to be obtained, however imperfectly, from a teleological search.

Like Solon, Plato intended to write a long fable about legendary Atlantis; like Solon, he never did write it. Yet there existed beyond the Atlantic an unvisited land, after all, and it is more strange than any of Plato's myths that Plato's apprehension of order and justice should be a living influence among the people of that land, twenty-four centuries after the mystical philosopher's soul departed from Athens.

The sage who engages in controversy with ignorant people must not expect to be treated with honour; and if a fool should overpower a philosopher by his loquacity it is not to be wondered at, for a common stone will break a jewel.

For the whole life of a philosopher is, as the same philosopher says, a meditation on death.

Whether it is a natural instinct or a mere illusion, I can't say; but one's emotions are more strongly aroused by seeing the places that tradition records to have been the favourite resort of men of note in former days, than by hearing about their deeds or reading their writings. My own feelings at the present moment are a case in point. I am reminded of Plato, the first philosopher, so we are told, that made a practice of holding discussions in this place;

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

Philosopher is becoming God in the process called life.

We make sense of the world, some philosopher once said, only through its rearrangement, through a constant shift in perspective coupled with a slight movement of this or that here and there and then here again. In that manner, in the imperfections such movements reveal, the truth becomes apparent.

René Descartes had a fetish for cross-eyed women.

The overriding issue for Aquinas is, "Is it true?" His Averroist colleague Siger of Brabant had asserted that if it was in Aristotle, then it must be true. Not necessarily, Aquinas says. He cites the Philosopher (as he calls Aristotle in both Summas) more often than any other non-Christian thinker. But he also finds powerful insights in Plato, in Saint Augustine, and in Dionysius the Areopagite.? Citations from the Bible always clinch the argument.

This sounds very Stoic. But Antisthenes took his Cynic doctrines to the next radical step. He rejected any and all social conventions, including all forms of property and government. He also violently turned his back on Plato's theology and even more violently his theory of Forms. "A horse I see," Antisthenes is supposed to have exclaimed, "but not horseness": words that would echo in the works of the medieval philosopher William of Ockham.

Dion now encouraged Plato to cleanse Syracuse of her luxuries and vices "and put on her the garment of freedom," along with laws to make the citizens orderly and virtuous. Plato may even have contemplated abolishing private property as he had in the Republic, or at least imposing limits on wealth. Certainly he hoped to train the young Dionysius to become the kind of conscientious ruler a true Platonic state would need to maintain order: in short, a living Philosopher Ruler.

For almost a century the Christian and Islamic worldviews overlapped, especially their view of nature. The seam along that overlap was Aristotle, whom Arab scholars dubbed the Master of Those Who Know and whom Christian scholars would come to know as the Philosopher, as if there were no others of any lasting value.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, might imply. Contemporaries viewed him with awe as the last Roman. We can think of him as the first medieval man, and the man who reintroduced Aristotle to the West. Boethius was born fifty years after Augustine's death

Aristotle, we must remember, was a doctor's son.

Now it was up to Bernard to consolidate his victory not just over Abelard, but over the entire Aristotelian worldview. What had offended Bernard most was how Abelard had tried to use the ancient pagan philosopher to pry open the most delicate divine mysteries.

To make the moral achievement implicit in science a source of strength to civilization, the scientist will have to have the cooperation also of the philosopher and the religious teacher.

Pain is a great philosopher, because it thinks constantly of how to get rid of itself and demands discipline.

To mount and descend in the words themselves-this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low, is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together. Must the philosopher alone be condemned by his peers always to live on the ground floor?

And for a dreamer of words, what calm there is in the word round. How peacefully it makes one's mouth, lips, and the being of breath become round. Because this too should be spoken by a philosopher who believes in the poetic substance of speech.

It's a pity you are a torturer," Ultan said. "You might have been a philosopher.

To the philosopher, infinity, knowledge, movement, empirical laws, etc., are things just as familiar {as family relations}. And as her dead brother and uncle are present to the peasant woman, thus Plato, Spinoza, etc. are present to the philosopher. The one has as much reality as the other, but the latter are immortal.

CHARTERIS [unfolding his arms in terror] No, please. Dont. As a philosopher, it's my business to tell other people the truth; but it's not their business to tell it to me. I dont like it: it hurts.

If we only look far enough off for the consequence of our actions, we can always find some point in the combination of results by which those actions can be justified: by adopting the point of view of a Providence who arranges results, or of a philosopher who traces them, we shall find it possible to obtain perfect complacency in choosing to do what is most agreeable to us in the present moment.