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Quotes about philosophy

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There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.
Cicero107–43 BC
There is nothing so absurd that it has not been said by some philosopher.
Cicero107–43 BCDe Divinatione – On Divination (44 BC), Book II, chapter LVIII, section 119
- Clever Jabs
We are fulfilled only when we aspire to nothing, when we are impregnated by that nothing to the point of intoxication.
ECEmil Cioran1911–1995On the Heights of Despair (1934)
All my life, I have lived with the feeling that I have been kept from my true place. If the expression “metaphysical exile” had no meaning, my existence alone would afford it one.
ECEmil Cioran1911–1995The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
- Life & Death
The only secure knowledge is that I exist.
René Descartes1596–1650
- Knowledge
My major preoccupation is the question, ‘What is reality?’
Philip K. Dick1928–1982Statement of 1975 quoted in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 8, Part 1 (1981)
It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.
Denis Diderot1713–1784Elements of Physiology (1875), “Will, Freedom”
Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881Letter to his brother Mikhail (1839), as translated in Konstantin Mochulsky, Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971), p. 17
- Knowledge
I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881Notes from Underground (1864), Part I: Underground, Chapter IXIn context
Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881Notes from Underground (1864), Part I: Underground, Chapter IXIn context
I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881Notes from Underground (1864), Part I: Underground, Chapter VIIIIn context
Strictly speaking, relativism does not permit social progress, because the new culture is by definition no better than the one it replaced.
Dinesh D'Souzaborn 1961The End of Racism (1995), Ch. 6
- Change
To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other.
Alexandre Dumas1802–1870The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), Volume One, Chapter 17In context
- Education
- Knowledge
Life is a chaplet of little miseries which the philosopher counts with a smile. Be philosophers, as I am, gentlemen; sit down at the table and let us drink. Nothing makes the future look so bright as surveying it through a glass of chambertin.
Alexandre Dumas1802–1870The Three Musketeers (1844), Chapter XLVIIIIn context
- Life & Death
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
Will Durant1885–1981The Story of Philosophy (1926)
- Science