Famous Quotes & Sayings

Roger Scruton

In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.

Roger Scruton

The problems of philosophy and the systems designed to solve them are formulated in terms which tend to refer, not to the realm of actuality, but to the realms of possibility and necessity: to what might be and what must be, rather than to what is.

Roger Scruton

A philosophy that begins in doubt assails what no-one believes, and invites us to nothing believable

Roger Ebert

Fight Club is a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy - the kind of ride where some people puke and others can't wait to get on again.

Roger Ebert

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.

Rod Stewart

Life is so brief and time is a thief when you're undecided.

Willard Van Orman Quine

The three main medieval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.

Willard Van Orman Quine

My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat--a boat which, to revert to Neurath's figure as I so often do, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.

Willard Van Orman Quine

It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

Ronald Reagan

I have seen the rise of fascism and communism. Both philosophies glorify the arbitrary power of the state... But both theories fail. Both deny those God-given liberties that are the inalienable right of each person on this planet, indeed, they deny the existence of God.

Saint Augustine

Never judge a philosophy by its abuse.

Zack Snyder

For whatever reason I was always obsessed with the potential of humanity's physicality. Especially since we grew up with such a non-physical philosophy.

Ziggy Marley

Reggae has a philosophy, you know? It's not just entertainment. There's an idea behind it, a way of life behind the music, which is a positive way of life, which is a progressive way of life for better people.

William Golding

Philosophy and Religion-what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?

Waylon Jennings

If I could only fly, you see, a lot of my problems would be gone. When you think of just how much I'd save on shoes alone.

Voltaire

When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.

Voltaire

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.

Voltaire

I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain.

Voltaire

Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them?

Voltaire

History should be written as philosophy.

Voltaire

The system of Descartes... seemed to give a plausible reason for all those phenomena; and this reason seemed more just, as it is simple and intelligible to all capacities. But in philosophy, a student ought to doubt of the things he fancies he understands too easily, as much as of those he does not understand.

Voltaire

Superstition sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them.

Voltaire

The necessity of saying something, the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say, and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous.

Voltaire

Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.

Voltaire

When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when a man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics.

William Strunk, Jr.

In his Philosophy of Style, Herbert Spencer gives two sentences to illustrate how the vague and general can be turned into the vivid and particular: In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of its penal code will be severe. In proportion as men delight in battles, bullfights, and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning, and the rack.

William Ralph Inge

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other peoples.

William Ralph Inge

In praising science, it does not follow that we must adopt the very poor philosophies which scientific men have constructed. In philosophy they have much more to learn than to teach.

William Ralph Inge

To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.

William Butler Yeats

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.

William Butler Yeats

It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

William Butler Yeats

The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

Wilhelm von Humboldt

To behold, is not necessary to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails.