Quotes About Philosophy

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

Leisure is the mother of Philosophy. ~Thomas Hobbes

Philosophy is just a hobby. You can’t open a philosophy factory. ~Dewey Selmon

The natural philosophers are mostly gone. We modern scientists are adding too many decimals. ~Martin H. Fischer

My definition of a philosopher is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down. ~Louisa May Alcott

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. ~Alfred North Whitehead

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. ~Ambrose Bierce

To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both – a philosopher. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Being a philosopher, I have a problem for every solution. ~Robert Zend

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck. ~Immanuel Kant

Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations. ~Aldous Huxley

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures. ~Nicolas Chamfort

Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines. ~Bertrand Russell

To teach how to live with uncertainty, yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy can do. ~Bertrand Russell

Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings. ~John Keats

What is the first business of philosophy? To part with self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn what he thinks that he already knows. ~Epictetus

Philosophy is a state of fermentation, a process without final outcome. ~Esa Saarinen

To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize. ~Blaise Pascal

We come late, if at all, to wine and philosophy: whiskey and action are easier. ~Mignon McLaughlin

Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine -
Unweave a rainbow.
~John Keats

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. ~La Rochefoucauld

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing. ~Ambrose Bierce