Philosophy

"Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love."

"Theology is to-day recognised to be the instrument of myth, philosophy to be the instrument of science."

"What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement."

"Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution."

"How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo’s lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns."

"That stone, Philosophers in vain so long have sought."

"Learning philosophy is learning a particular kind of intuitive understanding."

"The main concern of philosophy is to question and understand very common ideas that all of us use every day without thinking about them. A historian may ask what happened at some time in the past, but a philosopher will ask, "What is time?" A mathematician may investigate the relations among numbers, but a philosopher will ask, "What is a number?" A physicist will ask what atoms are made of or what explains gravity, but a philosopher will ask how we can know there is anything outside of our own minds. A psychologist may investigate how children learn a language, but a philosopher will ask, "What makes a word mean anything?" Anyone can ask whether it's wrong to sneak into a movie without paying, but a philosopher will ask, "What makes an action right or wrong?""

"For the best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be, first diligently to investigate the properties of things and establish them by experiment, and then later seek hypotheses to explain them. For hypotheses ought to be fitted merely to explain the properties of things and not to predetermine them [the hypotheses] except so far as they can be an aid to experiments. If any one offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see how anything certain can be determined in any science; for it is always possible to contrive hypotheses, one after another, which are found rich in new tribulations. Wherefore I judged that one should abstain from considering hypotheses as from a fallacious argument, and that the force of their argument must be removed, that one may arrive at a maturer and more general explanation."

"Jetzt wage ich es, der Weisheit selber nachzugehen und selber Philosoph zu sein; früher verehrte ich die Philosophen."

"Where there have been powerful governments, societies, religions, public opinions, in short wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force it way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart."

"[Philosophers] are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of “inspiration”—most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract—that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact."

"To grasp the limits of reason – only this is truly philosophy."

"What does a philosopher demand of himself, first and last? To overcome his time in himself, to become “timeless.”"

"Science rushes headlong, without selectivity, without “taste,” at whatever is knowable, in the blind desire to know all at any cost. Philosophical thinking, on the other hand, is ever on the scent of those things which are most worth knowing, the great and the important insights."

"The philosopher must be above all a free man, and not a slave of the passions."

"The evaluation of one's own social circumstance is part of the analysis of facts and events, and this kind of evaluation is, I feel, as good a starting point of the inquiry into the relations between philosophy and society as any other. Philosophy, in understanding human society, call for an analysis of facts and events, and an attempt to see how they fit into human life, and so how they make up human experience. In this way, philosophy, like history, can come to enrich, indeed to define, the experience of man."

"The possibility of all philosophy ... namely, that the intelligence, by affecting itself, gives itself a movement in accordance with its own law—that is, gives itself a form of activity all its own."

"Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?"

"Se moquer de la philosophie c’est vraiment philosophe."

"The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination."

"Philosophia non sapientiam, sed amorem sapientie pollicetur."

"Modo verus amor sit et vera quam ames sapientia, philosophus verus eris."

"I address all these complaints ... against the philosophers who believe and assert that philosophy should not be pursued because no monetary value or reward is assigned it, unmindful that by this sign they disqualify themselves as philosophers. Since their whole life is concentrated on gain and ambition, they never embrace the knowledge of the truth for its own sake."

"I have never philosophized save for the sake of philosophy, nor have I ever desired or hoped to secure from my studies and my laborious researches any profit or fruit save cultivation of mind and knowledge of the truth."

"Philosophy is the acquisition of knowledge."

"Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder."

"Those who belong to this small class have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and have also seen and been satisfied of the madness of the multitude, and known that there is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of States, nor any helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just. Such a saviour would be like a man who has fallen among wild beasts—unable to join in the wickedness of his fellows, neither would he be able alone to resist all their fierce natures, and therefore he would be of no use to the State or to his friends, and would have to throw away his life before he had done any good to himself or others. And he reflects upon all this, and holds his peace, and does his own business. He is like one who retires under the shelter of a wall in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along; and when he sees the rest of mankind full of wickedness, he is content if only he can live his own life and be pure from evil or unrighteousness, and depart in peace and good will, with bright hopes."

"The permanent mental attitude which the sensitive intelligence derives from philosophy is an attitude that combines extreme reverence with limitless skepticism."

"In the realm of philosophy, ... it is extraordinary how much weight is attached to fashion in a province where the mind ought to be free and independent, anxious only to arrive at the truth, and bowing to the authority of none but proved masters."

"Most definitions of philosophy are fairly controversial, particularly if they aim to be at all interesting or profound. That is partly because what has been called philosophy has changed radically in scope in the course of history, with many inquiries that were originally part of it having detached themselves from it. The shortest definition, and it is quite a good one, is that philosophy is thinking about thinking. That brings out the generally second-order character of the subject, as reflective thought about particular kinds of thinking — formation of beliefs, claims to knowledge — about the world or large parts of it. A more detailed, but still uncontroversial comprehensive, definition is that philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). Each of these three elements..."

"Well, for me, it's clarification of the nature of the world, the nature of reality. I seek the same satisfaction that one looks for in science in general, in theoretical science."

"Philosophy is not to relieve one of decisions, but to confront him with decisions. It is to make life not easy but, on the contrary, problematical."

"In order to live, man must act; in order to act, he must make choices; in order to make choices, he must define a code of values; in order to define a code of values, he must know what he is and where he is – i.e. he must know his own nature (including his means of knowledge) and the nature of the universe in which he acts – i.e. he needs metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, which means: philosophy. He cannot escape from this need; his only alternative is whether the philosophy guiding him is to be chosen by his mind or by chance."

"'Philosophy' is a word which has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain."

"Tigers are more beautiful than sheep, but we prefer them behind bars."

"[On the teaching of philosophy in secondary schools] In France and Spain, where it has been almost eliminated from secondary schools, they have regretted it. In Germany, there is no possibility of an intermediate level of knowledge. A philosopher like Gadamer is much better understood in Italy than in Germany. He once told me that when he came here he felt like he was in a sanctuary: all those young people who came to hear him had tools of understanding that no other country had."

"Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business."

"Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life."

"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."

"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."

"When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid."

"Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge—so I should contend—belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries."

"Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know."

"Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars."

"Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative."

"The philosopher places himself at the summit of thought; from there he views what the world has been and what it must become. He is not just an observer, he is an actor; he is an actor of the highest kind in a moral world because it is his opinion of what the world must become that regulates society."

"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."

"Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself."

"Über keinen Gegenstand philosophieren sie seltner als über die Philosophie."