quotations about philosophy
If your divines are not philosophers, your philosophy will neither be divine, nor able to divine.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
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?
Man is a philosopher in spite of himself.
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
The Problems of Philosophy
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
To understand a philosopher requires a philosopher.
HORACE BUSHNELL
Sermons for the New Life
The business of philosophy is to circumnavigate human nature.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
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"
Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
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
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
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
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
Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking; hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots that it unravels.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Occasions
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!
Philosophy does not exist. It is nothing but an hypostatized abstraction.
R. D. LAING
Reason and Violence
The philosophical problems that can be solved from the armchair have already been solved.
JOSHUA GREENE
"Philosophers are using science and data points to test theories of morality", Quartz, March 28, 2016
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
JAMES MADISON
attributed, Quote Junkie Presidents Edition
Philosophy is a good horse in a stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Good-Natured Man
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Problems of Philosophy