19th-century Philosopher Quotes

Scholars may quote Plato in studies, but the hearts of millions shall quote the Bible at their daily toil, and draw strength from its inspiration, as the meadows draw it from the brook.

We can only choose between two kinds of life, the active and the contemplative.

Had the God of the Quran been the Lord of all creatures, and been Merciful and kind to all, he would never have commanded the Mohammedans to slaughter men of other faiths, and animals, etc. If he is Merciful, will he show mercy even to the sinners? If the answer be given in the affirmative, it cannot be true, because further on it is said in the Quran "Put infidels to sword," in other words, he that does not believe in the Quran and the Prophet Mohammad is an infidel (he should, therefore, be put to death). (Since the Quran sanctions such cruelty to non-Mohammedans and innocent creatures such as cows) it can never be the Word of God.

Dayanand Saraswati
Dayanand Saraswati
To remember simplified pictures is better than to forget accurate figures.

Otto Neurath
Otto Neurath
A healthy appetite for righteousness, kept in due control by good manners, is an excellent thing; but to hunger and thirst after it is often merely a symptom of spiritual diabetes.

Now, when we say of any occurrence that it is 'physical', we mean thereby that it is potentially describable in physical terms. (Otherwise the expression would be wholly meaningless.) So it is perfectly correct, to state that, in every happening with which our sensory nerves are associated, we find, after we have abstracted therefrom every known or imaginable physical component, certain categorically nonphysical residue.

Sexuality throws no light upon love, but only through love can we learn to understand sexuality.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
Surely death acquires a new and deeper significance when we regard it no longer as a single and unexplained break in an unending life, but as a part of the continuously recurring rhythm of progress-as inevitable, as natural and benevolent as sleep.

J. M. E. McTaggart
J. M. E. McTaggart
Evil does not approach us as pride any more, but on the contrary as slumber, lassitude, concealment of the "I." … It may make us so quickly contented, that any definitive fire will die down. The venomous, breathtaking frigid mist seems able … to harden hearts and fill them with envy, obduracy and resentment, with bloody scorn for the divine image and light, with all the causes of the only true original sin, which is not wanting to be like God.

Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch
Children like to work, and are always eager to imitate the work of adults.

Georgi Plekhanov
Georgi Plekhanov
Hitherto, it must be admitted that American Negroes have been a race more in name than in fact, or to be exact, more in sentiment than in experience. The chief bond between them has been that of a common condition rather than a common consciousness; a problem in common rather than a life in common.

Alain LeRoy Locke
Alain LeRoy Locke
When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught.

Karl Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Its women are lovely and stubborn, its men angry and ingenious. Is there a land anywhere like southern Illinois?

The secret of all true persuasion is to induce the person to persuade himself.

I said that an observed fact only becomes a scientific fact when all the observers are in unanimous agreement.

The moral and religious teachings of no bible reach a higher altitude than the intelligence and mental development of the age and country which produced it.

Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life – save only this – that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.

Nature around us is order and reason, exactly as is the human mind. Our everyday activity implies a perfect confidence in the universality of the laws of nature.

We need not seek a cause or a motive or a purpose for that which is, in its nature, eternally self-existent and free.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
A system is said to be coherent if every fact in the system is related every other fact in the system by relations that are not merely conjunctive. A deductive system affords a good example of a coherent system.

Philosophy takes it upon itself to throw off the fear of things earthly, to rob death of its poisonous sting.

Foresight is indispensable for action. Now action for any organism of the animal kingdom is an absolute necessity. Surrounded by hostile nature it must act, it must foresee, if it wishes to live. "All life, all action," says Fouillée, "is a conscious or an unconscious divining. Divine or you will be devoured."

The true mathematician and physicist know very well that the realms of the small and the great often obey quite different rules.

The best physicians must be the best observers, but the man who sees keenly, who hears clearly, and whose senses, powerful at the start, are sharpened and refined by constant exercise, will only in exceptional instances be a visionary or a dreamer.

The history of science shows that great discoveries are made by means of imaginative insight, but it also teaches that mere imagination without dependence upon known facts is frequently a source of much mischief.