Philosopher Quotes

Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat.

My doctor said to me afterwards, 'When you were ill you behaved like a true philosopher. Every time you came to yourself you made a joke.' I never had a compliment that pleased me more.

By his provocations to good-natured merriment, a humorist of the first water contributes as much to the sum of happiness as the gravest philosopher.

Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.

When you want to hear a philosopher, do not say, 'You say nothing to me'; only show yourself worthy or fit to hear, and then you will see how you will move the speaker.

All that philosophers have handled for millennia has been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has ever escaped from their hands alive.

Being able to make friends and keep them, welcoming others and sharing with them, a guide, philosopher and friend. One like this will be praised.

Look not for refuge to anyone beside yourself. Heed fast to the truth as a lamp.

Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.

What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the chameleon poet.

How something important happens is the business of historians and newspapers, the effect it has is the business of philosophers and writers and especially poets.

Philosophers say that perfection is unattainable. Lithographers redefine perfection according to SEMI standards.

There is no place in the world, I imagine, for a philosopher with a sense of humor, a new leisure, and an inquiring turn of mind!

I was born in France. My father was a renowned French philosopher and journalist, and my mother was a painter. So I grew up in Parisian intellectual circles.

The philosopher spends in becoming a man the time which the ambitious man spends in becoming a personage.

Philosophers call God the great unknown The great misknown is more like it!

A pipe is a pocket philosopher,--a truer one than Socrates, for it never asks questions. Socrates must have been very tiresome, when one thinks of it.

Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million fresh particulars.

A philosopher must be more than a philosopher.

I have decided, it is fruitless. For I am no longer sure of anything concerning my existance. A philosopher is a dead poet and a dying theologian.

When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.

To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told...and have a sense of humor doing it.

A number of our scientists boast intelligence but lack wisdom. I find those to be the predictable ones.

Everyone now agrees that a physics lacking all connection with mathematics ... would only be an historical amusement, fitter for entertaining the idle than for occupying the mind of a philosopher.

Strange how short-sighted being invisible can make you.

To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man's, into the world, as it is God's.

There's no precedent for women philosophers and there's no precedence for most of the things I did.

It is decidedly not true that "nice guys finish last," as that highly original American baseball philosopher, Leo Durocher, was alleged to have said.

This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher"(when asked about completing his income tax form)

It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.

And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.

There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates.

It is now no mystery that some quite influential 'philosophers' were 'mentally' ill.

A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.

The facile economic and psychological debunking of the theoretical life cannot do away with its irreducible beauties.

As Kant says, the contribution of any common laborer would be greater than that of the greatest philosopher unless the philosopher makes some contribution to establishing the rights of humanity.

Sometimes when a philosopher's views are widely rejected by the world, the fault is not with the philosopher but with the world.

Kant can provide, and has provided, a good model for philosophers to think about the relation of metaphysics to science and scientific methodology.

A philosopher once said, 'Half of good philosophy is good grammar.'

There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust." "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.

The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most loves to close upon.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.

The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.

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.

All art preserves mysteries which aesthetic philosophers tackle in vain.

No philosopher was ever apathetic. If there is no love, it is not philosophy.

The great philosophers are poets who believe in the reality of their poems.

The difference between a poet and a philosopher is that the poet sees logically and describes basically the beauty whereas the philosopher defines the basics and shows the beauty of logics.