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Quotes about philosophy

250 quotes from 124 people

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We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.
Thomas Paine1737–1809
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
Blaise Pascal1623–1662
To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.
Blaise Pascal1623–1662
A thing isn’t quite real until you name it.
Jordan Petersonborn 1962“Biblical Series IV: Adam and Eve: Self-Consciousness, Evil, and Death”
Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
Plato429–349 BCTheaetetus, 155d, The Dialogues of Plato, Volume 3, 1871, p. 377
Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils,⁠—nor the human race, as I believe
Plato429–349 BCThe Republic (c. 375 BC), Book VIn context
- Government
- Leadership
There is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry
Plato429–349 BCThe Republic (c. 375 BC), Book XIn context
- Poetry
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849A Dream Within a Dream (1849).In context
All nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord harmony not understood;
All partial evil universal good;
And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, ‘Whatever is, is right.
Alexander Pope1688–1744An Essay on Man (1733–1734), Epistle IIn context
- Good & Evil
Brahman and Śakti are identical. If you accept the one, you must accept the other.
Ramakrishna1836–1886The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 134
- God
- Theology
What do you know and how do you know it?
Ayn Rand1905–1982
One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.
Eleanor Roosevelt1884–1962You Learn by Living (1960), Foreword
- Decisions
All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self.
Philip Roth1933–2018The Counterlife (1986), Ch. 5
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 Russell1872–1970The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918)
To teach how to live with uncertainty, yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy can do.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970A History of Western Philosophy (1945), Introductory, p. xiv.