Philosophy Quotes

Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy.

Margaret Thatche

Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Kahlil Gibran

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

John W. Gardne

You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

For academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.

Battaille

Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex.

Karl Marx

Friendship is not necessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Clive Staples Lewis

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

Henry St. John Bolingbroke

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

Aristotle

Music is a higher revelation than philosophy.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Life is a gift of the immortal Gods, but living well is the gift of philosophy.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Henry David Thoreau

Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.

Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Grimm Grotto

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Henry David Thoreau

All philosophy lies in two words Sustain and Abstain.

Epictetus

I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Aristotle, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the diciplines or continue the errors.

Unknown

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

C. S. Lewis

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

La Rochefoucauld

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, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism

Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.

H. L. Mencken

Philosophy is the highest music.

Plato

All serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy.

Ernest Dimnet

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Albert Camus

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

Epictetus