quotations about philosophy
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
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!
I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
lecture, "Year of Distraction"
Man is a philosopher in spite of himself.
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
The Problems of Philosophy
The business of philosophy is to circumnavigate human nature.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
To understand a philosopher requires a philosopher.
HORACE BUSHNELL
Sermons for the New Life
Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy
Across the Night of Paganism, Philosophy flitted on, like the Lantern-fly of the Tropics, a Light to itself, and an Ornament, but alas! no more than an ornament, of the surrounding Darkness.
STEPHEN TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Aids to Reflection
A philosopher ... is not fairly judged by his eccentricities, nor by the frailties to which he is liable; still less should his philosophy as a whole fall into ill-repute because of those among its devotees who have stumbled into wells, or who aimlessly pass their lives in whetting their faculties and then neglecting to use them.
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
The Problems of Philosophy
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
JAMES MADISON
attributed, Quote Junkie Presidents Edition
Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils -- no, nor the human race, as I believe -- and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.
PLATO
The Republic
Adults complicate things. When faced with a complex or controversial problem, grownups have a tendency to gravitate toward the details and sometimes lose sight of the big picture. Conversely, ask most children about how to solve the same problem and you'll often receive a simple, straightforward solution. Sometimes oversimplified, it's true, but often far wiser than one would expect, considering the source. Out of the mouths of babes... I think some of the world's best philosophers are able to hold onto this child's way of perceiving the things around them. Peeling away the layers surrounding an issue, finding the central kernel of truth and picking it out for the world to see and understand.
SHEA WINTERBERGER
"Living & Growing: We can all learn from children's books", Juneau Empire, April 10, 2016
Since the prolonged study of human philosophy -- which God has made empty and foolish, as the Apostle says, when that study lacks the flavouring of divine wisdom and the light of revealed truth -- sometimes leads to error rather than to the discovery of the truth, we ordain and rule by this salutary constitution, in order to suppress all occasions of falling into error with respect to the matters referred to above, that from this time onwards none of those in sacred orders, whether religious or seculars or others so committed, when they follow courses in universities or other public institutions, may devote themselves to the study of philosophy or poetry for longer than five years after the study of grammar and dialectic, without their giving some time to the study of theology or pontifical law. Once these five years are past, if someone wishes to sweat over such studies, he may do so only if at the same time, or in some other way, he actively devotes himself to theology or the sacred canons; so that the Lord's priests may find the means, in these holy and useful occupations, for cleansing and healing the infected sources of philosophy and poetry.
POPE LEO X
Papal bull condemning every proposition contrary to the truth of the enlightened Christian faith, Apostolici Regiminis, December 19, 1513
Philosophers are both effects and causes: effects of their social circumstances and of the politics and institutions of their time; causes (if they are fortunate) of beliefs which mould the politics and institutions of later ages.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
History of Western Philosophy
Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Pretty much from Socrates on, philosophers have practically specialized in deviating from common sense.
ROBERT BARRON
"Bill Nye Is Not 'The Philosophy Guy'", Aleteia, April 7, 2016
Should philosophers be expected to change the world? Such an expectation seems to me extravagant. Marx himself didn't change the world: he reinterpreted it, then other people changed it.
J. M. COETZEE
interview, Contemporary Literature, Autumn 1992
Sublime Philosophy!
Thou art the patriarch's ladder, reaching heaven;
And bright with beckoning angels--but alas!
We see thee, like the patriarch, but in dreams,
By the first step, dull slumbering on the earth.
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
Richelieu
Philosophy that satisfies its own intention, and does not childishly skip behind its own history and the real one, has its lifeblood in the resistance against the common practices of today and what they serve, against the justification of what happens to be the case.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Why Still Philosophy?
More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of men whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil