Philosophy Quotes

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Thinking, alone, can never lead to any knowledge of external objects. Sense perception is the beginning of all research, and the truth of theoretical thought is given exclusively by its relation to the sum total of those experiences. Physics, Philosophy, and Scientific Progress

Albert Einstein

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

Michel de Montaigne

What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,--for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.

Henry David Thoreau

Philosophy teaches us to bear with calmness — the misfortunes of our friends.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Bhagavad-Gita is perhaps the most systematic scriptural statement of the Perennial Philosophy. To a world at war, a world that, because it lacks the intellectual and spiritual prerequisites to peace, can only hope to patch up some kind of precarious armed truce, it stands pointing, clearly and unmistakably, to the only road of escape from the self-imposed necessity of self-destruction.

Science and philosophy can not be kept in water-tight compartments.

William Ralph Inge

Our intonations contain our philosophy of life, what each of us is constantly telling himself about things.

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned everything is war

All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

Bertrand Russell

It is my hope that as the Negro plunges deeper into the quest for freedom and justice he will plunge even deeper into the philosophy of non-violence.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.

Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

G. K. Chesterton

Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.

Slavery is wrong in its effect upon white people and free labor; it is the only thing that threatens the Union. It makes what Senator Seward has been much abused for calling an 'irrepressible conflict'. When they get ready to settle it, we hope they will let us know. Public opinion settles every question here, any policy to be permanent must have public opinion at the bottom, something in accordance with the philosophy of the human mind as it is. The property basis will have its weight. The love of property and a consciousness of right or wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often make a man's course seem crooks, his conduct a riddle.

Abraham Lincoln

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

The test of a religion or philosophy is the number of things it can explain.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds?

Stephen Hawking

The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.

Bertrand Russell

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure remarks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever.

The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.

Henry David Thoreau

On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge

Bertrand Russell

Philosophy, when superficially studied, excites doubt; when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

Thomas Jefferson

If what we regard as real depends on our theory, how can we make reality the basis of our philosophy?...But we cannot distinguish what is real about the universe without a theory...it makes no sense to ask if it corresponds to reality, because we do not know what reality is independent of a theory.

Stephen Hawking

Frankly, I do not like the idea of conversations to define the term "unconditional surrender."The German people can have dinned into their ears what I said in my Christmas Eve speech--in effect, that we have no thought of destroying the German people and that we want them to live through the generations like other European peoples on condition, of course, that they get rid of their present philosophy of conquest.

Franklin D. Roosevelt