Top 460 Philosophy Quotes

For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes and Kant) at sight without a dictionary. That meant Germany for my first summer vacation, to learn the thorny language on my own.

My basic philosophy is that no human being is a saint.

Darwinism as presented by Darwin contradicted idealistic philosophy, and this contradiction grew deeper with the development of its materialist teaching.

I don’t have any well-developed philosophy about journalism. Ultimately it is important in a society like this, so people can know about everything that goes wrong.

As soon as the printing press started flooding Europe with books, people were complaining that there were too many books and that it was going to change philosophy and the course of human thought in ways that wouldn’t necessarily be good.

What is a philosophy? It Is an answer satisfactory to the reason to all the great problems of life. That is what is meant by philosophy. It must satisfy the reason, and it must show the unity underlying the endless diversity of the facts that science observes.

Songwriting is just like any other kind of writing – it’s either fiction or nonfiction. You can even get into philosophy and politics, which I’ve done on occasion.

The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man’s being, unfolding itself in thought.

Human knowledge is dark and uncertain; philosophy is dark, astrology is dark, and geometry is dark.

Philosophy is properly home-sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home.

I support Democrats and Republicans. And I’m telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he’s gone, everybody’s going to be sitting on their thumbs.

I had a liberal arts education at Amherst College where I had two majors, mathematics and philosophy.

What we have done, the result of that comes to us whenever it comes, either today, tomorrow, hundred years later, hundred lives later, whatever, whatever. And so, it’s our own karma. That is why that philosophy in every religion: Killing is sin. Killing is sin in every religion.

The word ‘right’ should be excluded from political language, as the word ’cause’ from the language of philosophy.

I’m very passionate about philosophy and religion.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

‘The Last Airbender’ is genetically engineered for me. I love martial arts. I study it. The movie’s based on a lot of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. I was raised Hindu.

I’d like to be an academic, a philosophy lecturer if possible. I’d do a Masters in Ancient Hebrew maybe, and a Ph.D. hopefully, if I get in.

Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. Karma. The philosophy of action is that no one else is the giver of peace or happiness. One’s own karma, one’s own actions are responsible to come to bring either happiness or success or whatever.

When someone asks ‘what’s the use of philosophy?’ the reply must be aggressive, since the question tries to be ironic and caustic. Philosophy does not serve the State or the Church, who have other concerns. It serves no established power.

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

Rome should sometimes intervene and say this or that is not in conformity with the Catholic faith. Theologians should understand that. Some theologians go too far, for example, reducing the Catholic faith to a universal philosophy.

Mythology and history are my passion. I grew up in a religious family and learnt about our scriptures and philosophies. It’s the language I’m comfortable with.

Am I an Apple bigot? No. I can critique their products and their customer service philosophy. But overall, they do better than any other player.

The best music happens when you have a personal connection to it. That same philosophy can extend to the instrument you hold in your hands: if a guitar means something special, you’re bound to do great things with it.

Very obviously, the electorate as a mass has not imbibed the philosophy of ‘think national, act local’ or even ‘think big and beyond’ – it is a case, more, of ‘think local, act local, and let the national equation take care of itself.’

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.

Go out there and play hard, understand your teammates, understand the other team’s gameplan, understand your coaches’ philosophies and what they want you to do. There’s nothing better than showing, though; more than talking, you have to make your actions speak louder than words.

I think he’s informing himself, reaching out and getting ideas and information and advice. I haven’t the slightest doubt that internally taking shape in that marvelous brain of his is a philosophy of foreign affairs. But it would be premature to say that one is fully formed.

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

Religion and philosophy, philosophy and religion – they’re two words which are both… different. In spelling.

The human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.

Political parties depend for existence and success, not so much on the holding of identical views, as on a shared philosophy and ties of loyalty and respect between members. So there are good reasons to try to find compromises when differences emerge on a specific matter.

I have an ethics background. It doesn’t mean you’re perfect. But I tried to set an entirely different bar for politics in D.C. that’s based on ethics and first principles and political philosophy, and not this constant bickering of, ‘Are you Right or Left?’

Fathers like to have children good-natured, well-behaved, and comfortable, but how to put them in that desirable condition is out of their philosophy.

I believe in destiny and the philosophy of karma.

My plan is to open five restaurants based on the five elements in Chinese philosophy: wood, water, fire, earth and metal.

Barack Obama is an elegant and literate man with a cosmopolitan sense of the world. He is widely read in philosophy, literature, and history – as befits a former law professor – and he has shown time and again a surprising interest in contemporary fiction.

My philosophy is simple: It’s a down-home, common, horse-sense approach to things.

I, for one, struggle a little bit with a $250,000 education for a philosophy degree. They are a wonderful people, but we can’t employ philosophers in manufacturing in the United States. We need a one- or two-year technical add-on for a high school.

My dad had this philosophy that if you tell children they’re beautiful and wonderful then they believe it, and they will be. So I never thought I was unattractive. But I was never one of the girls at school who had lots of boyfriends.

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

‘Get along, go along’ is not an inspirational philosophy, and only God knows how much moral cowardice it has covered up over the years. Serve your time, collect your chits, and cash ’em in for your home state? No, I’d say we could ask for more than that from our senators.

You can be creative in anything – in math, science, engineering, philosophy – as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

My philosophy? Simplicity plus variety.

There is no question that Israelis – indeed, all concerned Jews – have to continue to work out a Jewish public philosophy that truly justifies a Jewish state in the land of Israel.

My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard toward that goal, we never lose – somehow we win out.

Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.

The actor is there to translate what’s on the page onto the stage or the screen. So I find it important that an actor manages to actually get out of the way, vanish as a person behind the character, never to be seen or talked about again. That’s my philosophy.

Persons who have been homeless carry within them a certain philosophy of life which makes them apprehensive about ownership.

Honestly, every person, every individual has a process, and my philosophy, whether it’s an actor or an animator, is you try to understand the process that person has so you can get the most out of them, but I think you have to sort of manipulate that process with honesty.

I went to Princeton from Amherst, where I split my interests between mathematics and philosophy.