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Quotes about philosophy

250 quotes from 124 people

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It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that distinguishes the philosopher.
Arthur Schopenhauer1788–1860Letter to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (November 1815)
- Courage
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
LLaozi580–501 BCTao Te Ching, Ch. 1, tr. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (1972)
There is neither spirit nor matter in the world; the stuff of the universe is spirit-matter. No other substance but this could produce the human molecule.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin1881–1955A Sketch of a Personalistic Universe (1936)
The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one.
Erwin Schrödinger1887–1961Mind and Matter (1958)
It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is.
Jorge Luis Borges1899–1986The Analytical Language of John Wilkins
- Knowledge
No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.
Jorge Luis Borges1899–1986“The Immortal” (1949)
All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.
Albert Camus1913–1960The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), “The Absurd Man”
- Morality
Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.
George Orwell1903–1950“Can Socialists Be Happy?”, Tribune (20 December 1943). Published under the name ‘John Freeman’.
Paradoxes explain everything. Since they do, they cannot be explained.
Gene Wolfe1931–2019The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001), Volume 1, Ch. 9
Know that this Universe, in its entirety, is nothing else but one individual being.
Maimonides1138–1204Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part I
I am of opinion that the revelation of God can only be established by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or in other words by ignorance.
Baruch Spinoza1632–1677Letter 21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg , November (1675)
- God
- Theology
No philosophy can ever be anything but a summary sketch, a picture of the world in abridgment, a foreshortened bird’s-eye view of the perspective of events.
William James1842–1910A Pluralistic Universe (1909), Lecture I
Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
David Hume1711–1776An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality; an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it.
John Adams1735–1826Letter to John Taylor (15 April 1814)
- Liberty
Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience.
Niels Bohr1885–1962“The Unity of Human Knowledge” (October 1960)
- Science