“Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.”
Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer
Fichte Studies § 651
“The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.”
Section 4 : Sceptical Doubts Concerning The Operations of The Understanding
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
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David Hume138
Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian 1711–1776Related quotes
Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer
The highest statement of cognition must be an expression of that fact which is the means and ground for all cognition, namely, the goal of the I.
Fichte Studies § 556
Stephen Jay Gould book An Urchin in the Storm
Source: An Urchin in the Storm (1987) "Utopia, Limited", p. 225
John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744) French-born British natural philosopher and clergyman
Source: Course of Experimental Philosophy, 1745, p. v: Preface
Context: All the knowledge we have of nature depends upon facts; for without observations and experiments our natural philosophy would only be a science of terms and an unintelligible jargon. But then we must call in Geometry and Arithmetics, to our Assistance, unless we are willing to content ourselves with natural History and conjectural Philosophy. For, as many causes concur in the production of compound effects, we are liable to mistake the predominant cause, unless we can measure the quantity and the effect produced, compare them with, and distinguish them from, each other, to find out the adequate cause of each single effect, and what must be the result of their joint action.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) Prussian geographer, naturalist and explorer
Equinoctial Regions of America (1814-1829)
“Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”
Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet
"Kindness and Compassion" p. 52
The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness (1990)
Context: This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
“But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy!”
George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism
William James, of Santayana's The Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), in a letter to George H. Palmer (1900), as quoted in George Santayana : A Biography (2003) by John McCormick
Misattributed
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism
"Niccolo Machiavelli" (1987)
“Now the kind of philosophy under which we proceed in the whole and in the part is moral philosophy or ethics; because the whole was undertaken not for speculation but for practice.”
Genus vero philosophie, sub quo hic in toto et parte proceditur, est morale negotium, sive ethica; quia non ad speculandum, sed ad opus inventum est totum et pars.
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Italian poet
Letter to Can Grande (Epistle XIII, 40), as translated by Charles Latham in A Translation of Dante's Eleven Letters (1891), Letter XI, §16, p. 199.
Epistolae (Letters)
Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician
The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (1978)