Famous Quotes & Sayings

Iris Murdoch

Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!

Iris Murdoch

I think philosophy is extremely good training for anyone who wants to do anything. Although that is an idea which people may speak scornfully of now, I think it does teach one to

Iris Murdoch

Learning philosophy is learning a particular kind of intuitive understanding.

Imre Lakatos

The history of mathematics, lacking the guidance of philosophy, [is] blind, while the philosophy of mathematics, turning its back on the most intriguing phenomena in the history of mathematics, is empty.

Imre Lakatos

Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.

I. F. Stone

I thought I might teach philosophy but the atmosphere of a college faculty repelled me; the few islands of greatness seemed to be washed by seas of pettiness and mediocrity.

Gloria Vanderbilt

Why not me? Suffering, she understood, is, in fact, random, universal.

James Gleick

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 wouldnt necessarily be good.

J. William Fulbright

Like medieval theologians we had a philosophy that explained everything to us in advance, and everything that did not fit could be readily identified as a fraud or a lie or an illusion... The perniciousness of the anti-Communist ideology of the Truman Doctrine arises not from any patent falsehood but from its distortion and simplification of reality, from its universalization and its elevation to the status of a revealed truth.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Fair speech may hide a foul heart.

J. R. R. Tolkien

We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

Isaac Mizrahi

There is one common philosophy, one thing that you can do no matter who you are or what you look like: You can actually get passionate instead of remaining cool or instead of trying to look like everybody else. You can - you must - immerse yourself passionately in who you are if you want to have style.

Isaac Disraeli

Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius.

Isaac Marion

Sometimes I wonder if he has a philosophy. Maybe even a worldview. I'd like to sit down with him and pick his brain, just a tiny bit somewhere in the frontal lobe to get a taste of his thoughts. But he's too much of a toughguy to ever be that vulnerable. - R on M

Isaac Asimov

University President: Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now the Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers . . . and the Department of Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers.

Immanuel Kant

The sum total of all possible knowledge of God is not possible for a human being, not even through a true revelation. But it is one of the worthiest inquiries to see how far our reason can go in the knowledge of God.

Immanuel Kant

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

Immanuel Kant

Philosophy stands in need of a science which shall determine the possibility, principles, and extent of human knowledge à priori.

Immanuel Kant

That Logic has advanced in this sure course, even from the earliest times, is apparent from the fact that, since Aristotle, it has been unable to advance a step, and thus to all appearance has reached its completion.

Immanuel Kant

I freely admit that the remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave a completely different direction to my researches in the field of speculative philosophy.

Immanuel Kant

When I could have used a wife, I could not support one; and when I could support one, I no longer needed any

Immanuel Kant

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Immanuel Kant

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

Ella Baker

Nixon was the one force in Montgomery for a number of years that made any effort in the direction of challenging the power structure. Ed Nixon's source of direction for that comes out of his relationship with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Care Porters and the Randolph philosophy of mass action. So, Ed Nixon really was the force that conceived of the boycott and drew up the original papers for the boycott.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Philosophy easily triumphs over past and future ills; but present ills triumph over philosophy.

Francis Schaeffer

In fact, philosophy is universal in scope. No man can live without a world view; therefore, there is no man who is not a philosopher.

Francis Schaeffer

In my reading of philosophy, I saw that there were innumerable problems that nobody was giving answers for. the Bible, it struck me, dealt with man's problems in a sweeping, all-encompassing thrust.

Francis Quarles

The height of all philosophy is to know thyself; and the end of this knowledge is to know God.

Ian Hart

My philosophy was, if I just do good work, someone will like it enough to employ me. It never made me famous. And I'm way, way too old now, mate. That boat's sailed.

Ian Hacking

The final arbitrator in philosophy is not how we think but what we do.