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Quotes about philosophy

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Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Unpopular Essays (1950), Chapter IV, Part iii, p. 74.
I should say that the universe is just there, and that is all.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970BBC Radio Debate on the Existence of God, Bertrand Russell v. Frederick Copleston (1948)
Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Letter to Gilbert Murray, December 28, 1902
Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?
Bertrand Russell1872–1970The Problems of Philosophy (1912)
- Knowledge
When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Theory of Knowledge (1913)
I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), Part III, chapter II, “Solipsism”, p. 196
- Comedy
A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970On the Nature of Acquaintance: Neutral Monism (1914)
- Facts
Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.
George Santayana1863–1952The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy (1911), pp. 48-49
Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.
George Santayana1863–1952Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)
That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
George Santayana1863–1952The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress (1905-1906), Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense
- Life & Death
Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.
José Saramago1922–2010Blindness (1995), p. 276
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 chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world “God” is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word “world”.
Arthur Schopenhauer1788–1860On Pantheism as quoted in Faiths of Famous Men in Their Own Words (1900) by John Kenyon Kilbourn
- God
Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind…
Erwin Schrödinger1887–1961“The Oneness of Mind”, as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
- Thinking
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)