Browsing Topic Best Philosopher Quotes

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.’

Joy comes not through possession or ownership but through a wise and loving heart.

I deepen my experience of God through prayer, meditation, and forgiveness.

Let us be dreamers, thinkers, speculative philosophers, or as our spouses would have it: Idiots

There will be no end to the troubles of states, Or of humanity itself, Till philosophers become kings in this world, Or till those we now call kings and rulers really And truly become philosophers.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

Easy to do are things that are bad and harmful to oneself. But exceedingly difficult to do are things that are good and beneficial.

A true philosopher is like an elephant; he never puts the second foot down until the first one is solidly in place.

Remember, success is a journey not a destination. Have faith in your ability. You will do just fine.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

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

We need the historian and philosopher to give us with trenchant pen, the story of our forefathers, and let our soul and body, with phosphorescent light, brighten the chasm that separates us. We should cling to them just as blood is thicker than water.

I am fascinated by Spinoza’s pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things

Some philosophers think that the idea of a consequentialist virtue theory is strange, but the real strength of consequentialism is that it can emulate the requirements of other moral theories when it is the case that acting on those theories would improve the world.

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.

The history of India for many centuries had been happier, less fierce, and more dreamlike than any other history. In these favorable conditions, they built a character – meditative and peaceful and a nation of philosophers such as could nowhere have existed except in India.

To test a perfect theory with imperfect instruments did not impress the Greek philosophers as a valid way to gain knowledge.

The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future.

The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious; what I discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied.

Constant happiness is the philosopher’s stone of the soul.

A dog has the soul of a philosopher.

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

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

Development of Western science is based on two great achievements: the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during the Renaissance). In my opinion, one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.

I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.

For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.

An English philosopher said that whatever is cosmic is also comic. Do the best you can and don’t take it so seriously.

Scientists search for truth. Philosophers search for morality. A criminal trial searches for only one result: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false.

I believe in magic … There is magic in the creative faculty such as great poets and philosophers conspicuously possess, and equally in the creative chessmaster.

The philosopher creates, he doesn’t reflect.

No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.