Philosophy Quotes

The most important principle of divine philosophy is the oneness of the world of humanity, the unity of mankind, the bond conjoining East and West, the tie of love which blends human hearts.

Abdul Baha, April 19, 1912, Earl Hall

True philosophy invents nothing it merely establishes and describes what is.

Victor Cousin

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

Isaac Asimov

Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.

Margaret Thatche

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to enduring fact of mystery.

Henry Mille

Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not but superstition dismounts all these, and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of men... the master of superstition is the people and arguments are fitted to practice, in a reverse order.

Francis Bacon

For academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.

Battaille

Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

Thomas Hobbes

Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.

Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Grimm Grotto

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

Aristotle

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.

H. L. Mencken

Life is a gift of the immortal Gods, but living well is the gift of philosophy.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Histories make men wise poets, witty the mathematics, subtle natural philosophy, deep moral, grave logic and rhetoric, able to contend.

Francis Bacon

History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning its two eyes are geography and chronology.

James A. Garfield

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

Henry St. John Bolingbroke

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism

We must exchange the philosophy of excuse - - what I am is beyond my control - - For the philosophy of responsibility.

Barbara Charline Jordan

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils but present evils triumph over it.

La Rochefoucauld

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

C. S. Lewis

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Henry David Thoreau

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

John W. Gardne

Religion is a man using a divining rod. Philosophy is a man using a pick and shovel.

Author Unknown

Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others.

Oscar Wilde

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5