19th-century Philosopher Quotes

Much confusion in science, and in everything else, arises from this, that men who have no capacity for thought will presume to theorise, because they cannot see that mere stores of knowledge, however vast, in themselves give no capacity for thinking.

The domain of physics is no proper field for mathematical pastimes. The best security would be in giving a geometrical training to physicists, who need not then have recourse to mathematicians, whose tendency is to despise experimental science.

It is the business of theories to forecast "facts", and of facts to form points of departure for theories, which again, when verified by the new facts to which they have successfully led, will extend the borders of knowledge.

F. C. S. Schiller

What then is the content of the concept of God common to all monotheistic religions? What remains, it seems, is only the emotional content: the highest enthusiasm and respect, humility and submissiveness

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz

Nothing is more human than for man to desire naturally things impossible to his nature. It is, indeed, the property of a nature which is not closed up in matter like the nature of physical things, but which is intellectual or infinitized by the spirit. It is the property of a metaphysical nature. Such desires reach for the infinite, because the intellect thirsts for being and being is infinite.

Jacques Maritain

Personal experience, therefore, is everything in Zen. No ideas are intelligible to those who have no backing of experience.

A man is simple when his chief care is the wish to be what he ought to be, that is honestly and naturally human.

An argument from probability is like an India-rubber ball; you hit it, and it may fly away, or it may return to you, all the more vigorously the harder you hit.

Edward B. Titchener

It is the liberty that is the mother, not the daughter, of order.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Weakness ever sympathizes with vice, because vice is a weakness which assumes the mask of strength. Madness holds reason in horror, and on all subjects it delights in the exaggerations of falsehood. The cause of all bewitchments, the poison of all philtres, the power of all sorcerers are there.

The concept of 'tonality' signifies the unified relationship of chords to a central tonic and hence comprises two different assumptions: first, the existence of unifying factors, and second, the existence of, or at least the hypothetical ability to reconstruct, a tonal center.

It is the nature of science to be more or less dry; until its commanding power is felt the path of the learner is thorny.

Best of feasts is the essence of the Supreme
Brahman, Nothing to beg when you have tasted it.
Vanishes the distinction of renouncer, renunciation and renounced.
And you become the monarch of the universe - Mankuthimma.

The belief that words have a meaning of their own account is a relic of primitive word magic, and it is still a part of the air we breathe in nearly every discussion.

Charles Kay Ogden

The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places.... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world.

William Torrey Harris

We must only learn that independence cannot be gained by a rebellion against the constitution of the universe, or by inverting the laws of life and evolution, but by comprehending them and adapting ourselves to the world in which we live.

You can only solve a problem which you recognize to be a problem.

R. G. Collingwood

We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion what is and what is not their 'proper sphere.' The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they are able to attain to.

Harriet Taylor Mill

At the time of great peril the inter-party clashes are tantamount to genocide.

Each theory becomes a Procrustean bed in which the empirical facts are stretched to fit a preconceived pattern.

The more clearly a principle is understood by the intellect, the more inexcusable is the neglect to put it into practice.

Music is the medium for expressing emotion. Music kindles love and infuses hope. It has countless voices and instruments. Music is in the hearts of all men and women

Swami Sivananda

The words that bore the deathless verse of Homer from bard to a group of fascinated hearers, and with whose fading sounds the poems passed beyond recall, are fixed on the printed page in a hundred tongues. They carry to a million eyes what once could reach but a hundred ears.

Nicholas Murray Butler

We may not feel as confident as once we did that the way to truth lies all open before us the moment we have brought our vague questionings to a form that "leaves the rest to experiment."

Edgar A. Singer, Jr.

The eternity of the spirit does not begin after death... but is, like God, always present.