quotations about philosophy
You could almost define a philosopher as someone who won't take common sense for an answer.
RICHARD DAWKINS
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The God Delusion
We've associated that word philosophy with academic study that in its own way has gotten so far beyond the layman that if you read contemporary philosophy you've no clue, because it's almost become math. And it's odd that if you don't do that and you call yourself a philosopher that you always get 'homespun' attached to it.
ROBERT FULGHUM
"Robert Fulghum: Philosopher King", January Magazine
Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
Egeria: or Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods and Wayside
Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Occasions
These philosophers, then, whom we see not undeservedly exalted above the rest in fame and glory, have seen that no material body is God, and therefore they have transcended all bodies in seeking for God.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
Everyone has his own philosophy that doesn't hold good for anybody else.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
The process of philosophizing, to my mind, consists mainly in passing from those obvious, vague, ambiguous things, that we feel quite sure of, to something precise, clear, definite, which by reflection and analysis we find is involved in the vague thing that we start from, and is, so to speak, the real truth of which that vague thing is a sort of shadow.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
You can't do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.
MAXIM GORKY
The Zykovs
Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!
DR. SEUSS
Oh, the Thinks You Can Think!
Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
If philosophy is still necessary, it is so only in the way it has been from time immemorial: as critique, as resistance to the expanding heteronomy, even if only as thought's powerless attempt to remain its own master and to convict of untruth, by their own criteria, both a fabricated mythology and a conniving, resigned acquiescence.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Why Still Philosophy?
To know how to deal with the present and to guard against worry and fear--that is true wisdom and the ultimate aim of philosophy.
HENRI BERGSON
The Philosophy of Poetry
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
JOHN KEATS
"Lamia"
Philosophy is a discipline open to anyone -- all you need is a bit of curiosity and an open mind.
BILL BREWER
"Philosophy: Understanding personal identity with Professor Bill Brewer", The Guardian, April 18, 2016
Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. A man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest, most perfect level of initiation, and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be. He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god.
PLATO
Phaedrus
When we affirm that philosophy begins with wonder, we are affirming in effect that sentiment is prior to reason.
RICHARD WEAVER
Ideas Have Consequences
Philosophy and the neurosciences collaborate in a very fruitful manner.
KATHINKA EVERS
"Neuroscience and philosophy take the stand", Indiana Daily Student, April 10, 2016
A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The World As Will and Idea
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
KARL MARX
Theses on Feuerbach