quotations about philosophy
The philosophical problems that can be solved from the armchair have already been solved.
JOSHUA GREENE
"Philosophers are using science and data points to test theories of morality", Quartz, March 28, 2016
Should philosophers be expected to change the world? Such an expectation seems to me extravagant. Marx himself didn't change the world: he reinterpreted it, then other people changed it.
J. M. COETZEE
interview, Contemporary Literature, Autumn 1992
There are moments in life where the question of knowing whether one might think otherwise than one thinks and perceive otherwise than one sees is indispensable if one is to continue to observe or reflect ... What is philosophy today ... if it does not consist in, instead of legitimizing what we already know, undertaking to know how and how far it might be possible to think otherwise?
MICHEL FOUCAULT
History of Sexuality
For philosophy to be effective, it has to understand the world in which it operates.
RICHARD BOURKE
"Hume's Call to Action", The Nation, April 20, 2016
Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.
KARL MARX
The German Ideology
A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Personal Recollections
Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Philosophy does not exist. It is nothing but an hypostatized abstraction.
R. D. LAING
Reason and Violence
It has been said that he is a fool who works for philosophy instead of making philosophy work for him; but a man cannot give to the world even a little of a true philosophy without reaping sevenfold himself.
ELSA BARKER
Letters from a Living Dead Man
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.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Problems of Philosophy
Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking; hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots that it unravels.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Occasions
Philosophy is a good horse in a stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Good-Natured Man
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.
AYN RAND
"Philosophy, Who Needs It?"
Welders make more than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers.
MARCO RUBIO
Republican presidential debate, November 10, 2015
Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Why Still Philosophy?
In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.
TIMOTHY LEARY
attributed, The Best Advice Ever for Teachers
A philosopher is one who disengages himself from all former prejudices, masters his passions, and learns to think, speak, and act, according to rule and order. He is ready to teach, but more ready to learn. He is of all, and yet of no sect.... If he thinks with few, it is not because they are few, but because there are few that think.
ANNE MARY PERCEVAL
Miscellaneous Thoughts, Maxims, Essays, Aphorisms, and Extracts
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line.
JOHN KEATS
"Lamia"
Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us -- but not suckle us.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Journals and Papers, 1837
Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Unpopular Essays