Top 100 Philosophical People Quotes
#1. Give a small number of people the power to enrich themselves beyond everyone's wildest dreams, a philosophical rationale to explain all the damage they're causing, and they will not stop until they've run the world economy off a cliff.
Philipp Meyer
#2. Not too many people in cocktail parties are aware of Bioprinting and growing organs, or the coming technological singularity; I've seen very little philosophical speculation about how far we can go, how much we could achieve.
Jason Silva
#3. I have also figured out that for many people death is a difficult subject, not at all as simple as it is for me.
Maija Haavisto
#4. I'm interested in philosophical psychology, people like Nietzsche, Freud, Alcan, Foucault, Derrida.
Hanif Kureishi
#5. There's 7 billion 46 million people on the planet and most of us have the audacity to think we matter.
George Watsky
#6. If you change who you are to suit other people, you may end up dressed for the wrong occasion
Benny Bellamacina
#7. If only yesterday could be my tomorrow then today wouldn't even matter.
Carroll Bryant
#8. These were innocent people, so innocent that they thought poverty a crime that wealth would allow them to forget.
from the notebooks of Celal Salik
Orhan Pamuk
#9. Some people will hate you for pursuing what you love. Make sure you don't love them more.
Harsh Snehanshu
#10. Ensconced in our finite spaces,
We think we are at the helm of justice:
Degrading people's minutest of affairs.
Taranum
#11. People into hard sciences, neurophysiology, often ignore a core philosophical question: 'What is the relationship between our unique, inner experience of conscious awareness and material substance?' The answer is: We don't know, and some people are so terrified to say, 'I don't know.'
Raymond Moody
#12. You put on a bishop's robe and miter, he pondered, and walk around in that, and people bow and genuflect and like that, and try to kiss your ring, if not your ass, and pretty soon you're a bishop. So to speak. What is identity? he asked himself. Where does the act end? Nobody knows.
Philip K. Dick
#13. Mrs Beaumont shrugged. 'Dougie travelled light in life,' she said. 'He knew it was people who were important.
Sara Sheridan
#14. The awful thing is that if i can forget they're people, it will be no different at all
Suzanne Collins
#15. People are deeply imbedded in philosophical, i.e., grammatical confusions. And to free them presupposes pulling them out of the immensely manifold connections they are caught up in.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#16. I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent the implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, make me less of an American.
Pete Seeger
#17. The engineer performs many public functions from which he gets only philosophical satisfactions. Most people do not know it, but he is an economic and social force.
Herbert Hoover
#18. If a person sings quietly to himself on the street people smile with approval; but if he talks it's not alright; they think he's crazy. The singer is presumed to be happy and the talker unhappy ...
Edward Hoagland
#19. The blues records of each decade explain something about the philosophical basis of our lives as black people ... Blues is a basis of historical continuity for black people. It is a ritualized way of talking about ourselves and passing it on.
Sherley Anne Williams
#20. Philosophy is best practised by people in general and not by philosophers alone. Philosophy is too often a luxury now, but in ancient Greece, carpenters, masons and beggars were the main practitioners. What I am trying to develop is a philosophical system where all the subjects can be taught.
Michel Onfray
#21. Some people try to get very philosophical and cerebral about what they're trying to say with jazz. You don't need any prologues, you just play.
Oscar Peterson
#22. Most people hew the battlements of life from compromise, erecting their impregnable keeps from judicious submissions, fabricating their philosophical drawbridges from emotional retractions and scalding marauders in the boiling oil of sour grapes.
Zelda Fitzgerald
#23. If some people read my fiction and see it as fundamentally about philosophical ideas, what it probably means is that these are pieces where the characters are not as alive and interesting as I meant them to be.
David Foster Wallace
#24. People are divided into two parts: some of them look for and cannot find anything, others find but are not satisfied.
Mihai Eminescu
#26. People! Please. Listen. Our life, our bodies are the most authentic clinical record ever! Why do you have to ask for any other one, alien, fake, distorted by illegible handwriting belonging to someone who has never been us and has never tried to understand us? Do you think that is right?
Igor Eliseev
#27. When we are children, people show us so many things that we lose the profound sense of seeing ... And just how could adults show us the world they have lost! They know; they think they know; they say they know ...
Gaston Bachelard
#28. It seems in this day and age, people are banking on a Faith that has long since checked out.
Solange Nicole
#29. There is a view in some philosophical circles that anything that can be understood by people who have not studied philosophy is not profound enough to be worth saying. To the contrary, I suspect that whatever cannot be said clearly is probably not being thought clearly either.
Peter Singer
#30. If you have the power to change the world for the better, you should do it. That's why people who do nothing are idiots, but idiots who do nothing are life-savers.
James McGregor
#31. The philosophical point is that our happiness and wellbeing is not based on incomes rising. This is not just the wisdom of sages but of ordinary people. Prosperity is more social and psychological: it's about identification, affiliation, participation in society and a sense of purpose.
Tim Jackson
#32. To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/ spiritual leap and become more 'human' human beings. In order to change/ transform the world, they must change/ transform themselves.
Grace Lee Boggs
#33. The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.
Isobelle Carmody
#34. We are running up against the difficulty of maintaining a coherent philosophical distinction between giving people the right to stop external or artificial processes that prolong their lives and giving them the right to stop the natural, internal processes that do so
Atul Gawande
#35. I'm not a sociologist, and the novel has often concerned itself with sociology. It's one of the generating forces that's made fiction interesting to people. But that's not my concern. I'm interested in psychology. And also certain philosophical questions about the world.
Jonathan Lethem
#36. Most people need a philosophical enema and I'm the bag with the pipe.
Marla Buchanan
#37. In a sense these are questions that most people ask themselves to some extent. They become philosophical when asked with a persistence and rigour that pushes past conventional or evasive answers. It's nothing to do with acquiring a technical facility in an academic discipline.
George Pattison
#38. Sometimes I don't feel as if I'm a person at all. I'm just a collection of other people's ideas.
David Bowie
#39. The Greeks, with their truly healthy culture, have once and for all justified philosophy simply by having engaged in it, and having engaged in it more fully than any other people.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#40. Philosophy without criticism is like hunting deer without a shotgun, so, if you want people to like you, avoid robust philosophical debate.
Julian Baggini
#41. There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.
Oscar Wilde
#42. It is all too easy for a society to measure itself against some abstract philosophical principle or political slogan. But in the end, there must remain the question: What kind of life is one society providing to the people that live in it?
Hubert H. Humphrey
#43. People should not worry so much about what they do but rather about what they are.
Meister Eckhart
#45. A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.
John Le Carre
#46. Oh, people get used to so many things," said Vadesh, "if only they give them selves a chance.
Orson Scott Card
#47. When most people turn on their TVs, they don't expect a frank discussion of philosophical ideas in their practical context. Or any context.
David O. Russell
#48. I renounce all love except pure philosophical love. The so-called love of human animals removes people two by two from the only possibility of happiness, which is the communion of beautiful souls.
Tom Stoppard
#49. Godshawk looked surprised, the way that people generally do when you ask them philosophical questions in shrubberies in the middle of the night.
Philip Reeve
#50. The philosophical conservative is someone willing to pay the price of other people s suffering for his principles.
E.L. Doctorow
#51. Many people who have progressively lowered their personal standards in an attempt to win social acceptance and life's comforts bitterly resent those of philosophical bent who refuse to compromise their spiritual ideals and who seek to better themselves.
Epictetus
#52. Brilliant people never think of the lives they smash, being brilliant.
Don DeLillo
#53. People who have cut their teeth on philosophical problems of rationality, knowledge, perception, free will and other minds are well placed to think better about problems of evidence, decision making, responsibility and ethics that life throws up.
Simon Blackburn
#54. Integrity has a high psychological and philosophical value, for many people it is a highest value, it associate with health of soul. Dualism, contradiction, torments of hesitation - is something of illness, integrity is health, people strive for it instinctively.
Simon Soloveychik
#55. I get maudlin. Some people drink; some get depressed; some run around having sex with anyone with a pulse. Me, I get philosophical. It's healthier.
Rachel Caine
#56. It always turns out this way: at first people idolize you, swear to be your faithful friend forever and then spit in your tea and in your soul, too.
Igor Eliseev
#57. Maybe God left it up to people to develop the ability to bring back Christ into their lives. Maybe God wanted us to invent our own savior when we were ready. When we need it most. Denny says maybe it's up to us to create our own messiah. To save ourselves.
Chuck Palahniuk
#58. You have always understood and accepted my most genuine, most intimate impulses and responded to them with surprising accuracy. I wish all people turned into such mirrors for each other.
Igor Eliseev
#59. People may come along and argue philosophically that they like one better than another; but we have learned from much experience that all philosophical intuitions about what nature is going to do fail.
Richard P. Feynman
#60. The problem in today's society is that the truth is in short supply and people love soft lies more than hard truths
Rassool Jibraeel Snyman
#62. I don't have a philosophical objection, necessarily, to a travel ban if that is the thing that is going to keep the American people safe.
Barack Obama
#63. Mental reflection os so much more interesting than tv [that]it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant, but it never is.
Robert M. Pirsig
#64. People should not confuse opinions and rules with egocentric interests.
Duop Chak Wuol
#66. You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards a dissolution of the marriage.
Robert Louis Stevenson
#67. The world needs people like you,' Simmon said in the tone of voice that let me know he was turning philosophical. 'You get things done. Not always the best way, or the most sensible way, but it gets done nonetheless. You're a rare creature.
Patrick Rothfuss
#68. Things change all the time, so why do people make such a philosophical to-do that things are constantly in transition?
Twyla Tharp
#69. The media - and I'm not blaming them - obviously like to seize on the differences between people and, sure, there are some senior members of the government who are in a slightly different philosophical space to mine. But do not underestimate the substantial single-mindedness of this government.
Tony Abbott
#70. Why would God create people with all these desires and curiosities and then punish them for trying to satisfy them?
Belle Blackburn
#71. Science, it is said, no doubt has ameliorated the material conditions of human life, but is powerless to solve those moral and philosophical questions that interest cultured people so deeply.
Elie Metchnikoff
#72. I'm not trying to be philosophical, but I really think it's my job to help children. And I don't care if people laugh.
Michael Jackson
#73. Only one kind of species of animals bites the hand that feeds them - mankind.
Fakeer Ishavardas
#74. Try and avoid people who use the word "cant" regularly associate rather with those who say "can" and do
Rassool Jibraeel Snyman
#75. We are each a dozen people who were all the same child.
Robert Breault
#76. I am not too accusatorial or defensive by nature. I have always been kind of philosophical about it, remembering that it is just a game. People take these things too seriously.
Steve Nash
#77. For wicked people to do evil requires money, and good people superstition. Combining these elements and we get organized religion, but to achieve the worst of all evil conflate politics to the compound and the tragedies are endless.
Sean S. Kamali
#78. I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking.
Wynton Marsalis
#80. Some people build houses others build people; of the two I would rather be of the latter
Rassool Jibraeel Snyman
#81. The Abbe Paul looked at Agnes rather as Alain had, with respect. 'How sensible. People are desperate to probe mysteries which for the most part are best left unprobed. It is the modern curse: this demented drive to explain every blessed thing. Not everything can be explained. Nor should be, I think.
Salley Vickers
#82. I suppose belief is there to prevent people from thinking.
Gasmaskman
#83. The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as not to embarrass the gods and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home.
Ray Bradbury
#84. As so often happens in philosophy, clever people accept a false general principle on a priori grounds and then devote endless labour and ingenuity to explaining away plain facts which obviously conflict with it.
C. D. Broad
#85. Never try to outgrow the people who were helping you walk,
when you could not even walk.
Akash Lakhotia
#86. People are not measured by their accomplishments, but by how many times they screw up trying to achieve them.
James McGregor
#87. People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who are hoarding a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.
Laurence Sterne
#88. One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.
Frank Zappa
#89. Our music has depth, and attempts philosophical thought and meaning with discussions of infinity, eternity and mortality. There is a line which people cross that turns it into some magical, mystical realm, for which I dont claim responsibility and dont hold any great truck with.
David Gilmour
#90. Some people, no matter how easy the path they are given on the walk of life, will find a way to mess it all up. Ray Levine was one of those people.
Harlan Coben
#91. Philosophical probing could be allowed to the educated, as long as the mass of people were not disturbed in the comfort of their religious faith. But the
Malveena McKendrick
#92. It is hard to hear the truth from people who get paid to distort it.
Sean S. Kamali
#93. We don't do focus groups - that is the job of the designer. It's unfair to ask people who don't have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.
Jonathan Ive
#94. One of the peculiar features of philosophical questions is how eager people are to offer solutions that miss the point of the questions. Sometimes these failed solutions are scientific, and sometimes they are religious, and sometimes they are based on what is called plain common sense.
Rebecca Goldstein
#95. Very often design is the most immediate way of defining what products become in people's minds.
Jonathan Ive
#96. Whenever a high-profile leader dies, people immediately attempt to summarize that person's life in a sentence. Often, critics and commentators get caught up looking at the leader's style, or which political or philosophical camp they represented.
John C. Maxwell
#97. I clearly saw us from outside, like in a picture: we are not people, we are a road sign warning: "Stop and thank luck because such fate didn't befall you as befell us, and only then keep going your way".
Igor Eliseev
#99. Maybe the most provocative thing one can do - and I'm not the first one to do it - is to ask the moral and philosophical question: why are some people better than others? Why are some people more moral than others?
David Bezmozgis
#100. People, they love blood. They love action. Not this talky, depressing, philosophical bullshit.
Birdman
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