Top 100 Philosopher Quotes
#1. Man's greatest battle is being a true philosopher.
Kedar Joshi
#2. There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don't have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don't have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.
John Cage
#3. A dog has the soul of a philosopher.
Plato
#5. The philosopher spends in becoming a man the time which the ambitious man spends in becoming a personage.
Philibert Joseph Roux
#6. There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.
Oliver Goldsmith
#8. If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself - direct experience of life. The same is true for art. Here, too, we an dispense with the masters.
Henry Miller
#9. A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#10. No philosopher who was really philosophical could think anything except that, in that central sea, the wave of the world had risen to its highest, seeming to touch the stars. But the wave was already stooping; for it was only the wave of the world. That
G.K. Chesterton
#11. I have a friend, physically magnificent, who combines within himself the intellect of a philosopher, the diplomacy of a statesman, the executive ability of the general of an army, the courtesy of a Chesterfield - and the emotions of a rabbit.
Myrtle Reed
#12. The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.
Plato
#13. Jesus would be another wise man or philosopher like Socrates if it were not for three words. With the declaration of these words the message of the good news of Jesus Christ changed from "fanatical audacity", to the fantastic reality of a reconciled relationship and eternal hope. "HE IS RISEN!
Tom Barton
#14. As a philosopher, I'm not obliged to explore every unknown wilderness.
Harry Frankfurt
#15. When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
#16. William James was not a prophet. He was a philosopher whose philosophy reflected his profound humanity.
Stanley Hauerwas
#17. Physical immortality is seductive. The ancient Hindus sought it; the Greek physician Galen from the 2nd Century A.D. and the Arabic philosopher/physician Avicenna from the 11th Century A.D. believed in it.
S. Jay Olshansky
#18. How I understand the philosopher - as a terrible explosive, endangering everthing ... my concept of the philosopher is worlds removed from any concept that would include even a Kant, not to speak of academic "ruminants" and other professors of philosophy ...
Friedrich Nietzsche
#19. The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge.
Plato
#20. So the highest and the happiest of endeavors is to be a philosopher ? Doesn't it seem self-serving for a philosopher to make that claim?
Irvin D. Yalom
#21. The philosopher is lacking who interprets the deed and does not merely transpose it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#22. Nietzsche claimed that a philosopher's system of thought always arises from his autobiography, and I believe that to be true for all therapists - in fact, for anyone who thinks about thought. At a conference approximately
Irvin D. Yalom
#23. The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body.
Kahlil Gibran
#24. It is not wit merely, but temper, which must form the well-bred man. In the same manner it is not a head merely, but a heart and resolution, which must complete the real philosopher.
Anthony Ashley Cooper
#25. As the seventeenth-century French philosopher Montaigne once said, "My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.
Kristin Neff
#26. By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates
#27. Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but only in contradiction to what is known in nature. - St. AUGUSTINE, LATIN PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGIAN
Pam Grout
#28. 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.
Arthur Holly Compton
#29. All the hungers will kill, but hunger of loneliness turns you into a philosopher.
M.F. Moonzajer
#30. To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time.
Victor Hugo
#31. For the time being, it need only be said that the philosopher in question made much of human existence as a tragedy that need not have been were it not for the intervention in our lives of a single, calamitous event: the evolution of consciousness - parent of all horrors.
Thomas Ligotti
#32. The introduction of the word 'intuition' by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument.
Alasdair MacIntyre
#33. Scottish philosopher William Drummond, read: "He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot reason is a fool; he who dares not reason is a slave.
Jonathan Eig
#34. What is it to be a philosopher? Is it not to be prepared against events?
Epictetus
#35. To a philosopher all news is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
Henry David Thoreau
#36. Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
Bertrand Russell
#37. I would love to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche on a train or boat and to talk with him all night. Incidentally, I don't consider his philosophy long-lived. It is not so much persuasive as full of bravura.
Anton Chekhov
#38. A cleric who loses his faith abandons his calling; a philosopher who loses his redefines his subject.
Ernest Gellner
#39. The definition of a philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat, which isn't really there. And the definition of a theologian is he's somebody who finds it.
Michael Ruse
#40. The philosopher had rescued her. The unknown letter writer had saved her from the triviality of everyday existence.
Jostein Gaarder
#41. It's no use trying to talk philosophy to our politicians. And I'm not a moral or political philosopher. I'm not interested in that.
Marjorie Grene
#42. Just look at life with more playful eyes. Don't be serious. Seriousness becomes like a blindness. Don't pretend to be a thinker, a philosopher. Just simply be a human being. The whole world is showering its joy on you in so many ways, but you are too serious, you cannot open your heart.
Osho
#43. I hold firmly to my original views. After all I am a philosopher.
Voltaire
#44. Great American thinker and philosopher Earl Nightingale said, "If you spend one extra hour each day in the study of your chosen field, you'll be a national expert in five years or less." What do you want to be an expert in?
Abby Beale
#45. He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher ... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
Douglas Adams
#46. Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher's salary.
Patrick F. McManus
#47. Was it not the great philosopher and mathematician Leibnitz who said that the more knowledge advances the more it becomes possible to condense it into little books?
J. Arthur Thomson
#48. Enough of thought, philosopher!
Too long hast thou been dreaming
Unlightened, in this chamber drear,
While summer's sun is beaming!
Space-sweeping soul, what sad refrain
Concludes thy musings once again?
Emily Bronte
#49. Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher; and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately, it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.
Will Durant
#50. When standing before certain men the philosopher regrets that thinkers are but perishable tissue, the artist that perishable tissue has to think.
Thomas Hardy
#51. which is to say, stand with the philosopher, or else with the mob!" - EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.15.13 W
Ryan Holiday
#52. The hearts of all mystic lovers." Likewise when Ibn Arabi, the distinguished philosopher, writer, and mystic, saw the young Rumi walking behind his father one day, he exclaimed, "Glory be to God, an ocean is
Elif Shafak
#53. So too Plato was, in my view, a very unreliable Platonist. He was too much of a philosopher to think that anything he had said was the last word.
Gilbert Ryle
#54. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin sagely pointed out, liberty for wolves means death to lambs.124
Naomi Oreskes
#55. The artist must be a philosopher. Socrates the skilled sculptor, Jean-Jacques [Rousseau] the good musician, and the immortal Poussin, tracing on the canvas the sublime lessons of philosophy, are so many proofs that an artistic genius should have no other guide except the torch of reason.
Jacques-Louis David
#56. Mrs. Wiggs was a philosopher, and the sum and substance of her philosophy lay in keeping the dust off her rose-colored spectacles.
Alice Hegan Rice
#57. The true philosopher is a man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his armchair.
P.G. Wodehouse
#58. 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.
George Bernard Shaw
#59. Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
#60. We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever ... and all the time it is carrying us about ... It is the human nervous system itself.
Robert Anton Wilson
#61. A philosopher is someone who promotes moral excellence, argues for moral excellence, and gets other people to behave morally and excellently based on those arguments.
Stefan Molyneux
#62. There are more riddles in a stone than in a philosopher's head
Damon Knight
#63. Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#64. The theologian considers sin mainly as an offence against God; the moral philosopher as contrary to reasonableness.
Thomas Aquinas
#65. Humour is human. Why? Well, because the Philosopher, Aristotle, says so.
Simon Critchley
#66. The philosopher seeks to hear within himself the echoes of the world of symphony and to re-project them in the form if concepts
Friedrich Nietzsche
#67. To grow a philosopher's beard.
Horace
#68. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.
Albert Einstein
#69. You can argue with a philosopher, but you can't argue with a good song. And I think I've got a few good songs.
Cat Stevens
#70. For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.
Plato
#71. The role of a philosopher is to create a better way for the future generations.
Debasish Mridha
#72. For a courageous man cannot die dishonorably, a man who has attained the consulship cannot die before his time, a philosopher cannot die wretchedly.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#73. Some great poet or philosopher once said that " he who goes to nature for comfort must go to her empty handed " , and I think he was right.
Flora Thompson
#74. Whoever is so stupid as to imagine God to be either masculine or feminine openly shows that he is as bad a philosopher as a theologian.
Marie De Gournay
#75. Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic.
Brit Marling
#76. Lying is not a sin, since there has never been a law-maker or philosopher who could determine what truth is. I lie for the fun of it. I lie for the fear of the gravity of life. I lie out of boredom. How can anyone who has more fantasy than the Catholic evening paper get by without lying?
Iwan Goll
#77. A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them.
Leonard Louis Levinson
#78. A philosopher may deplore the eternal discords of the human race, but he will confess, that the desire of spoil is a more rational provocation than the vanity of conquest.
Edward Gibbon
#79. But facts obscure the truth, which is that writing prose doesn't make you a prose writer any more than philosophizing makes you a philosopher or fooling around makes you a fool.
Mark Forsyth
#80. What does a philosopher demand of himself, first and last? To overcome his time in himself, to become timeless.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#81. Jesus, as a philosopher is wonderful. There's no greater role model, in my view, than Jesus Christ. It's just a shame that most of the people who follow him and call themselves Christians act nothing like him.
Bill Maher
#82. The maximalist dreamers of this epoch, the Left Bolshevik (Vpered) group led by the philosopher of proletarian culture, Aleksandr Bogdanov, were effectively defeated by the hardheaded "centrist" Leninists by 1912.
Michael David-Fox
#83. The thing is this: Even if the husband leaves her in this awful craven way, she will still have to count it as a miracle, all of those happy years she spent with him. "It was a fucking miracle that I found him," she tells the philosopher.
Jenny Offill
#84. A philosopher thinks out loud to make things better for everyone else. Fanatics make themselves louder because they think they are better than everyone else.
Corey Taylor
#85. The thinker who should turn aside from slang would resemble a surgeon who should avert his face from an ulcer or a wart. He would be like a philologist refusing to examine a fact in language, a philosopher hesitating to scrutinize a fact in humanity.
Victor Hugo
#86. Socrates ... is the first philosopher of life [Lebensphilosoph], ... Thinking serves life, while among all previous philosophers life had served thought and knowledge ... Thus Socratic philosophy is absolutely practical: it is hostile to all knowledge unconnected to ethical implications.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#87. So-called worst-case event, when it happened, exceeded the worst case at the time. I have called this mental defect the Lucretius problem, after the Latin poetic philosopher who wrote that the fool believes that the tallest mountain in the world will be equal to the tallest one he has observed.
Anonymous
#88. Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away.
Charles Dickens
#89. A scientist first has to presuppose any theory based on available relevant data. In terms of such presupposition, a scientist begins his journey of scientific exploration as a philosopher.
Abhijit Naskar
#90. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip,
Henry David Thoreau
#91. This seems plainly absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities. One
Bertrand Russell
#92. I believe that dance was the first art. A philosopher has said that dance and architecture were the first arts. I believe that dance was first because it's gesture, it's communication. That doesn't mean it's telling a story, but it means it's communicating a feeling, a sensation to people.
Martha Graham
#94. The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.
Wallace Stevens
#95. For conclusion, I say the philosopher teacheth, but he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned only can understand him; that is to say, he teacheth them that are already taught.
Philip Sidney
#96. The simple style is bad for the savage because he does worse than to obtain the luxuries of life; it is good for the philosopher because he does better than to work for them. The question is whether you can bear freedom ...
Henry David Thoreau
#97. The highest ethical duty is often to discard the outmoded ethics of the past. - Corliss Lamont, humanist philosopher
Dale McGowan
#98. This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher(when asked about completing his income tax form)
Albert Einstein
#99. Only a tiny percentage of people in the world care about moral theory in the sense I have been discussing, whereas 100 percent of the people in the world like stories. Most moral insights come from stories, but it is the special virtue of the philosopher to organize those insights
Anonymous
#100. That scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennett pointed out that evolution counters one of the oldest ideas we have: 'the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation.
Richard Dawkins
