Quotes about philosophy
page 16

“Jared, allow me to share with you my philosophy of human beings. It can be summed up in four words: I like good people.”

John Scalzi book The Ghost Brigades

Source: The Ghost Brigades (2006), Chapter 5 (p. 113)

People

“Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the "life of an apostle," and been ready to die "the death of a martyr." "Not in passivity [the passive affects], but in activity, lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity"”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

IX. 16
The Philosophy of Antoninus

Life, Death, Men, Lie

“Exploring maps as representation forges important links between cartography and a variety of cognate fields concerned with this topic in its various facets (including geographical information systems [GIs] and remote sensing, as well as art, cognitive science, sociology, cognitive and environmental psychology, semiotics, and even the history and philosophy of science).”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 1

Art, History, Sense, Science

“We are here to become great men and women, and with that purpose in view, we must eliminate everything in our religion and philosophy that tends to make the human mind a dependent weakling. If you would serve God and be truly religious, do not kneel before God, but learn to walk with God, and do something tangible every day to increase the happiness of mankind. This is religion that is worth while, and it is such religion alone that can please the Infinite.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

Source: Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912), Chapter 12, p. 184–185

Women, Men, God, Happiness

“Thinking which displaces, or otherwise defines, the sacred has been called atheistic, and that philosophy which does not place it here or there, like a thing, but at the joining of things and words, will always be exposed to this reproach without ever being touched by it.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) French phenomenological philosopher

Source: In Praise of Philosophy (1963), p. 46

Thinking

“Historical studies of the sciences tend to adopt one of two rather divergent points of view. One of these typically looks at historical developments in a discipline from the inside. It is apt to take for granted many of the presuppositions that are currently popular among members of the discipline and hence tends to view the past in terms of gradual progress toward a better present. The second point of view does not adopt its framework of issues and presuppositions from the field that is the object of study but tends nowadays to rely heavily on questions and concepts derived from studies in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. A history written from the insider's point of view always conveys a strong sense of being "our" history. That is not the case with the second type of history, whose tone is apt to be less celebratory and more critical.
In the case of the older sciences, histories of the second type have for many years been the province of specialists in the history, philosophy, or sociology of science. This is not, or perhaps not yet, the case for psychology, whose history has to a large extent been left to psychologists to pursue. Accordingly, insiders' histories have continued to have a prominence they have long lost in the older sciences. Nevertheless, much recent work in the history of psychology has broken with this tradition.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: Constructing the subject: Historical origins of psychological research. 1994, p. vii; Preface.

History, Question, Sense, Study

“Whence is it that moral philosophy, which was so carefully cultivated in the ancient academy, should be forced in the modern to give place to natural, that was originally designed to be subservient to it? Which is to exalt the hand-maid into the place of mistress7. This appears not only a preposterous, but a pernicious method of institution; for as the mind takes a turn of thought in future life, suitable to the tincture it hath received in youth, it will naturally conclude that there is no necessity to regard, or at least to lay any stress upon what was never inculcated upon it as a matter of importance then: and so will grow up in a neglect or disesteem of those things which are more necessary to make a person a wise and truly understanding man than all those rudiments of science he brought with him from the school or college.”

John Mason (1706–1763) English Independent minister and author

A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)

Life, Youth, School, Understanding

“The philosophy of the foundations of probability must be divorced from mathematics and statistics, exactly as the discussion of our intuitive space concept is now divorced from geometry.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Introduction, The Nature of Probability Theory, p. 3.
An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition)

Mathematics

“Even where it is manipulated by major talents, deconstruction tends to bear either on marginal texts (Sade, Lautréamont), or on secondary work by a great writer (Barthes on Balzac's Sarrazine). The classics of deconstruction, in Jacques Derrida or Paul De Man, are "misreadings" not of literature but of philosophy; they address themselves to philosophical linguistics and the theory of language. The masks they seek to strip off are those worn by Plato, by Hegel, by Rousseau, by Nietszche or Saussure. Deconstruction has nothing to tell us of Aeschylus or Dante, of Shakespeare or Tolstoy.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), II: The Broken Contract, Ch. 8 (p. 128).

Literature

“India is more than a nation state. It is also a unique civilization with philosophies and cosmologies that are markedly distinct from the dominant culture of our times – the West. India’s spiritual traditions spring from dharma which has no exact equivalent in western frameworks. Unfortunately, in the rush to celebrate the growing popularity of India on the world stage, its civilizational matrix is being digested into western universalism, thereby diluting its distinctiveness and potential.”

Rajiv Malhotra book Being Different

Rajiv Malhotra. Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism, 2011. Synopsis

World, Spring, Universe, Time

“We come late, if at all, to wine and philosophy; whiskey and action are easier.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Wine

“Herbert Casson was a highly prolific writer on management, with a career as a management guru spanning some four decades. A skilled writer who was also a successful entrepreneur, he used his own experiences and acute observations of the world around him to develop a philosophy of management based on the concept of ‘efficiency’. He published more than seventy books, which by the time of his death had sold more than half a million copies around the world. Something of a maverick, he was never really accepted by the business academic community in either Britain or America. His books were popular and populist, highly entertaining and full of penetrating insight.”

Herbert N. Casson (1869–1951) Canadian journalist and writer

Morgen Witzel (2003), Fifty Key Figures in Management. p. 42

Death, Books, World, Communication

“To a society that inarticulately and thoughtlessly takes itself to be divine, Hegel says, Yes, we are indeed divine, and philosophy can show how this is both possible and necessary.”

Merold Westphal (1940)

Source: Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (1992), p. 38

“Although this book deals with the conflict between religion and science, I see this as only one battle in a wider war—a war between rationality and superstition. Religion is but a single brand of superstition (others include beliefs in astrology, paranormal phenomena, homeopathy, and spiritual healing), but it is the most widespread and harmful form of superstition. And science is but one form of rationality (philosophy and mathematics are others), but it is a highly developed form, and the only one capable of describing and understanding reality.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. xii

War, Books, Religion, Mathematics

“When mons. Descartes's philosophical Romance, by the Elegance of its Style and the plausible Accounts of natural Phænomena, had overthrown the Aristotelian Physics, the World received but little Advantage by the Change: For instead of a few Pedants, who, most of them, being conscious of their Ignorance, concealed it with hard Words and pompous Terms; a new Set of Philosophers started up, whose lazy Disposition easily fell in with a Philosophy, that required no Mathematicks to understand it, and who taking a few Principles for granted, without examining their Reality or Consistence with each other, fancied they could solve all Appearances mechanically by Matter and Motion; and, in their smattering Way, pretended to demonstrate such things, as perhaps Cartesius himself never believed; his Philosophy (if he bad been in earnest) being unable to stand the test of the Geometry which he was Master of.”

John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744) French-born British natural philosopher and clergyman

Source: Course of Experimental Philosophy, 1745, p. vi-v: Preface

World, Way, Understanding, Nature

“We are discovering that natural philosophy needs bonds of sympathy as well as precision of intellect.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Source: The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999), Ch.11 Only Connect

Nature

“Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but ’tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar’d to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

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Part 1, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals

Way, Feeling, Motivation, Nature

“The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. But before this can be accepted it must show itself capable of explaining the tridimensionality of space, the laws of motion, and the general characteristics of the universe, with mathematical clearness and precision; for no less should be demanded of every Philosophy.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Architecture of Theories (1891)

Law, Intelligence, Mathematics, Universe

“When he was asked what advantage had accrued to him from philosophy, his answer was, “The ability to hold converse with myself.””

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 4
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

“Marx felt that the job of the proletariat was to be that of the tool. For Marx, the proletariat is ‘the material weapon of philosophy.’ In order to bring the proletariat into line he must first know it, and lean how to manage it. But his contempt for it, his hatred for the ‘petits grands hommes,’ is obvious by his constant referral to ‘the rabble,’ ‘the emigrant scum,’ ‘the rotten emigrant swine,’ ‘the toads.’ Marx asked Engels, “What is this rabble good for if it forgets how to fight?’”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The Intellectual Student’s Guide to Survival (1968), p. 75

Swine, Fight, Forgetting

“If the communist theories and philosophies are so rational and humanitarian, and if, as they contend, man is basically both rational and humanitarian, why have bloody violence and force been necessary to gain their ends?”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The Intellectual Student’s Guide to Survival (1968), p. 57

“The main purpose of this book is the development of a new method for the semantical analysis of meaning, that is, a new method for analyzing and describing the meanings of linguistic expressions. This method, called the method of extension and intension, is developed by modifying and extending certain customary concepts, especially those of class and property. The method will be contrasted with various other semantical methods used in traditional philosophy or by contemporary authors.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: Meaning And Necessity (1947), p. v: Preface

Books

“…my belief in the sacrament of the Eucharist is simple: without touch, God is a monologue, an idea, a philosophy; he must touch and be touched, the tongue on flesh, and that touch is the result of the monologues, the idea, the philosophies which led to faith; but in the instant of the touch there is no place for thinking, for talking; the silent touch affirms all that, and goes deeper: it affirms the mysteries of love and mortality.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

On Charon’s Wharf.
Broken Vessels (1991)

Love, God, Faith, Idea

“The most ordinary things are to philosophy a source of insoluble puzzles. With infinite ingenuity it constructs a concept of space or time and then finds it absolutely impossible that there be objects in this space or that processes occur during this time…. the source of this kind of logic lies in excessive confidence in the so-called laws of thought.”

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) Austrian physicist

S. Rajasekar, N.Athavan, "Ludwig Edward Boltzmann"
Attributed

Law, Confidence, Time

“"What is good in Korzybski's work," they say, "is not new, and what is new is not good." On the other hand, many "Korzybski-ites" proclaim that Korzybski's work has "nothing to do" with semantics. They go so far as to say that the very term "general semantics" was an unfortunate choice; that had Korzybski known what confusion would arise between semantics and general semantics he would not have used it at all. Korzybski himself has maintained that while semantics belongs to the philosophy of language and perhaps to the theory of knowledge, general semantics belongs to empirical science: that it is the foundation of a science of man, the basis of the first "non-aristotelian system," which has had no predecessor and which no academic semanticist has ever achieved.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

(1951, p. 14)
1950s, "What is Semantics?", 1950

Knowledge, Science

“There exists in society a very special class of persons that I have always referred to as the Believers. These are folks who have chosen to accept a certain religion, philosophy, theory, idea or notion and cling to that belief regardless of any evidence that might, for anyone else, bring it into doubt. They are the ones who encourage and support the fanatics and the frauds of any given age. No amount of evidence, no matter how strong, will bring them any enlightenment. They are the sheep who beg to be fleeced and butchered, and who will battle fiercely to preserve their right to be victimized… the U. S. Patent Office handles an endless succession of inventors who still produce perpetual-motion machines that don't work, but no number of idle flywheels will convince these zealots of their folly; dozens of these patent applications flow in every year. In ashrams all over the world, hopping devotees of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi will never abandon their goal of blissful levitation of their bodies by mind power, despite bruises and sprains aplenty suffered as they bounce about on gym mats like demented (though smiling) frogs, trying to get airborne. Absolutely nothing will discourage them.”

James Randi (1928) Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic

The Mask of Nostradamus: The Prophecies of the World's Most Famous Seer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_of_Nostradamus, p. 140–142.

Age, World, Religion, Smile

“Of course, atheism, which is merely the lack of belief in gods, isn’t responsible for explaining altruism and ethics, a task that properly belongs to philosophy, science, and psychology. And those areas have offered plenty of nonreligious explanations for the “Moral law” and altruism. The explanations involve evolution, reason, and education.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 168-169

God, Education, Law, Science

“The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

Chap XXV.
The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918)

World, Dreams, Hope, Question

“But some years after, a letter, which he received from Dr. Hooke, put him on inquiring what was the real figure, in which a body let fall from any high place descends, taking the motion of the earth round its axis into consideration. Such a body, having the same motion, which by the revolution of the earth the place has whence it falls, is to be considered as projected forward and at the same time drawn down to the centre of the earth. This gave occasion to his resuming his former thoughts concerning the moon, and Picard in France having lately measured the earth, by using his measures the moon appeared to be kept in her orbit purely by the power of gravity; and consequently, that this power decreases, as you recede from the centre of the earth, in the manner our author had formerly conjectured. Upon this principle he found the line described by a falling body to be an ellipsis, the centie of the earth being one focus. And the primary planets moving in such orbits round the sun, he had the satisfaction to see, that this inquiry, which he had undertaken merely out of curiosity, could be applied to the greatest purposes. Hereupon he composed near a dozen propositions, relating to the motion of the primary planets about the sun. Several years after this, some discourse he had with Dr. Halley, who at Cambridge made him a visit, engaged Sir Isaac Newton to resume again the consideration of this subject; and gave occasion to his writing the treatise, which he published under the title of Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. This treatise, full of such a variety of profound inventions, was composed by him, from scarce any other materials than the few propositions before mentioned, in the space of a year and a half.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Republished in: Stephen Peter Rigaud (1838) Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Newton's Principia http://books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA49. p. 519 <br class="br">Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Appearance, Time, Sun

“Every time I turn on the television and hear a manager from the lower divisions, they’ve usually got a Scottish accent. I don’t know the reason for that but let’s hope it continues. I like the philosophy of Scottish managers, they’ve always got this will to win and this work ethic, which I believe in.”

George Graham (1944) Scottish footballer

Interview, Sport.co.uk, 14 January 2011

Hope, Time

“The need for government in these respects arises because absolute freedom is impossible. However attractive anarchy may be as a philosophy, it is not feasible in a world of imperfect men.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 25

Men, World, Freedom

“After all, in the poets love has its priests, and sometimes one hears a voice which knows how to defend it; but of faith one hears never a word. Who speaks in honor of this passion? Philosophy goes further. Theology sits rouged at the window and courts its favor, offering to sell her charms to philosophy. it is supposed to be difficult to understand Hegel, but to understand Abraham is a trifle. To go beyond Hegel's is a miracle, but to get beyond Abraham is the easiest thing of all.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Problemata: Preliminary Expectoration
1840s, Fear and Trembling (1843)

Love, Faith, Understanding, Passion

“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech (May 28, 1948) at the Scottish Unionist Conference, Perth, Scotland, in Never Give In! : The best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches (2003), Hyperion, p. 446 ISBN 1401300561
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Failure, Envy

“In philosophy at the universities truth occupies only a secondary place and, if called upon, she must get up and make room for another attribute.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Man sieht daraus, daß in der Universitäts-philosophie die Wahrheit nur eine sekundäre Stelle einnimmt und, wenn es gefordert wird, aufstehn muß, einer andern Eigenschaft Platz zu machen.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 152, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 140
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Truth, Universe

“Fascism as a consequence of its Marxian and Sorelian patrimony... conjoined with the influence of contemporary Italian idealism, through which Fascist thought attained maturity, conceives philosophy as praxis.”

Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher and politician

Origini e dottrina del fascismo, Rome (1929) p. 58, A. James Gregor, The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism, New York: NY, The Free Press (1969) p. 317

“The English mind was like the London drawing room, a comfortable and easy spot, filled with bits and fragments of incoherent furnitures, which were never meant to go together, and could be arranged in any relation without making a whole, except by the square room. Philosophy might dispute about innate ideas till the stars died out in the sky, but about innate tastes no one, except perhaps a collie-dog, has the right to doubt; least of all the Englishman, for his tastes are his being; he drifts after them as unconsciously as a honey-bee drifts after his flowers.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Dogs, Star, Flowers, Idea

“I have been a lifelong Congressman because I believe in the party's philosophy.”

Sunil Dutt (1929–2005) Hindi film actor

We all are one, whichever religion we belong to

“The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

Classic, Romantic, Modern (1961), ch. I: "Romanticism — Dead or Alive?"

Men, Age, Problem

“The practical reformer has continually to demand that changes be made in things which are supported by powerful and widely-spread feelings, or to question the apparent necessity and indefeasibleness of established facts; and it is often an indispensable part of his argument to show, how these powerful feelings had their origin, and how those facts came to seem necessary and indefeasible. There is therefore a natural hostility between him and a philosophy which discourages the explanation of feelings and moral facts by circumstances and association, and prefers to treat them as ultimate elements of human nature; a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favorite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason. In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 7: General View of the Remainder of My Life (p. 192)

God, Hostility, Truth, Sex

“Science, and physics in particular, has developed out of the Newtonian paradigm of mechanics. In this world view, every phenomenon we observe can be reduced to a collection of atoms or particles, whose movement is governed by the deterministic laws of nature. Everything that exists now has already existed in some different arrangement in the past, and will continue to exist so in the future. In such a philosophy, there seems to be no place for novelty or creativity”

Francis Heylighen (1960) Belgian cyberneticist

Source: The science of self-organization and adaptivity (2001), p.253

World, Law, Nature, Science

“The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science? Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An easy subject, at which very few excel! The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher – in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician. Much, but not all, of this many-sidedness Marshall possessed. But chiefly his mixed training and divided nature furnished him with the most essential and fundamental of the economist's necessary gifts – he was conspicuously historian and mathematician, a dealer in the particular and the general, the temporal and the eternal, at the same time.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Alfred Marshall, p. 170; as cited in: Donald Moggridge (2002), Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography, p. 424

Lie, Mood, Understanding, Nature

“Even Plato assumes that the genuinely perfect condition of man means no sex distinction (and how strange this is for people like Feuerbach who are so occupied with affirming sex-differentiation, regarding which they would do best to appeal to paganism). He assumes that originally there was only the masculine (and when there is no thought of femininity, sex-distinction is undifferentiated), but through degeneration and corruption the feminine appeared. He assumes that base and cowardly men became women in death, but he still gives them hope of being elevated again to masculinity. He thinks that in the perfect life the masculine, as originally, will be the only sex, that is, that sex-distinction is a matter of indifference. So it is in Plato, and this, the idea of the state notwithstanding, was the culmination of his philosophy. How much more so, then, the Christian view.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Journals VA 14
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Life, Death, Women, Men

“Never was there a time, in the history of the world, when moral heroes were more needed. The world waits for such, the providence of God has commanded science to labor and prepare the way for such. For them she is laying her iron tracks, and stretching her wires, and bridging the oceans. But where are they? Who shall breathe into our civil and political relations the breath of a higher life? Who shall touch the eyes of a paganized science, and of a pantheistic philosophy, that they may see God? Who shall consecrate to the glory of God, the triumphs of science? Who shall bear the life-boat to the stranded and perishing nations?”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 312.

Life, God, World, Way

“A geologist should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature. …But the brief duration of human life, and our limited powers, are so far from permitting us to aspire to such extensive acquisitions, that excellence even in one department is within the reach of few, and those individuals most effectually promote the general progress, who concentrate their thoughts on a limited portion of the field of inquiry.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.1, p. 3
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Life, Nature, Science

“The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Philosophie ... hat zwar ihre Gegenstände zunächst mit der Religion gemeinschaftlich. Beide haben die Wahrheit zu ihrem Gegenstande, und zwar im höchsten Sinne - in dem, daß Gott die Wahrheit und er allein die Wahrheit ist.
Logic, Chapter 1

God, Truth, Religion, Sense

“"Spinoza did not seek to found a sect, and he founded none"; yet all philosophy after him is permeated with his thought.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Will Durant, beginning with a quote of Sir Frederick Pollock in Life and Philosophy of Spinoza (1899)
A - F

“This divergence and perversion of the essential question is most striking in what goes today by the name of philosophy. There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: What must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition on the Christian nations. For example, in Kant´s Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and specially Rousseau.

But in more recent times, since Hegel´s assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards.

The second step, degrading human thought yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the childish originality of Nietzsche´s half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of others.

If anyone doubted that the Christian world of today has reached a frightful state of torpor and brutalization (not forgetting the recent crimes committed in the Boers and in China, which were defended by the clergy and acclaimed as heroic feats by all the world powers), the extraordinary success of Nietzsche´s works is enough to provide irrefutable proof of this.

Some disjointed writings, striving after effect in a most sordid manner, appear, written by a daring, but limited and abnormal German, suffering from power mania. Neither in talent nor in their basic argument to these writings justify public attention. In the days of Kant, Leibniz, or Hume, or even fifty years ago, such writings would not only have received no attention, but they would not even have appeared. But today all the so called educated people are praising the ravings of Mr. N, arguing about him, elucidating him, and countless copies of his works are printed in all languages.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: What is Religion, of What does its Essence Consist? (1902), Chapter 11

People, World, Education, Law

“The liberalism with which I am concerned is a version of liberalism prominent in the moral and legal and political philosophy of the day: a liberalism in which the notions of justice, fairness, and individual rights play a central role, and which is indebted to Kant for much of its philosophical foundation.”

Michael J. Sandel book Liberalism and the Limits of Justice

Introduction
Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 1998

Justice

“John Dewey… said “Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not preparation for life, but is life itself.” I understand and completely agree with this philosophy.”

Virgil John Tangborn (1920–1944)

October 1, 1938

Life, Education, Understanding

“Hegel determines and presents only the most striking differences of various religions, philosophies, time and peoples, and in a progressive series of stages, but he ignores all that is common and identical in all of them. … His system knows only subordination and succession; coordination and coexistence are unknown to it.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 54
Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy (1839)

People, Religion, Time, Success

“I was very much surprised when Mill informed me that he had not read a line of Hegel, either in the original or in translation, and regarded the entire Hegelian philosophy as sterile and empty sophistry. I mentally confronted this with the opinion of the man at the Copenhagen University who knew the history of philosophy best, my teacher, Hans Brochner, who knew, so to speak, nothing of contemporary English and French philosophy, and did not think them worth studying. I came to the conclusion that here was a task for one who understood the thinkers of the two directions, who did not mutually understand one another. I thought that in philosophy, too, I knew what I wanted, and saw a road open in front of me.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Reminiscences of my Childhood and Youth (1906), pp. 276–277

History, Understanding, Thinking, Study

“With what philosophical point of view did I begin my career as teacher? Looking back to that period, I see that it was a rather inchoate form of idealism, reflecting the liberal Protestant orientation I had then adopted. This idealism was gradually revised to make room for major aspects of Deweyan instrumentalism. In my years at Columbia, Dewey had impressed me as a person, and during my decade in Chicago, in close contact with colleagues whom he had deeply influenced, I came to accept what appeared to be the core of his contribution to philosophy. But continued sensitivity to insights from various quarters prevented me from becoming a disciple of any one philosopher or philosophical school.”

Edwin Arthur Burtt (1892–1989) American philosopher

Burtt (1972), cited in: D. Villemaire, (2002), E.A. Burtt, Historian and Philosopher: : A Study of the Author of The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science. p. 20

School, Teachers, Appearance, Personality

“Philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science - problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science.”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

The Story of Philosophy (1926)

Life, Death, Beauty, Knowledge

“While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Ionych (1898)

Guy, Science, Personality

“Every human being longs to be happy, to satisfy the wants of the body with food, with roof and raiment, and to feed the hunger of the mind, according to his capacity, with love, wisdom, philosophy, art and song.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

How To Reform Mankind (1896). http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/how_to_reform_mankind.html Republished by Kessinger Publishing, Llc, 2005. http://books.google.de/books/about/How_to_Reform_Mankind.html?id=u-IpAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Love, Wisdom, Hunger, Happiness

“A community whose life is not irrigated by art and science, by religion and philosophy, day upon day, is a community that exists half alive.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Faith for Living (1940)

Life, Religion, Art, Communication

“The above discussion shows why the Pope regards the New Age Movement with hostility. He regards it as an old enemy. If it derives from old Gnosticism… then it is easy to understand this hostility. The Movement is subversive of Christianity – its ideas, its externality, its exclusiveness, its authoritarianism…. All this shows that the Movement has a great responsibility to shoulder and a great role to play - an old role in a new context. To play it adequately and honourably, it has to become more conscious of its inspiration, its underlying ideas and philosophy; it has to become aware of its lost Pagan ancestry, its Eastern links and its common spiritual heritage.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Pope John Paul II on Eastern religions and yoga: A Hindu-Buddhist rejoinder.

Hostility, Age, Idea, Understanding

“One does not need to have the authentic Hittite nose to be a Jew; the term Jew rather denotes a special way of thinking and feeling. A man can very soon become a Jew without being an Israelite; often it needs only to have frequent intercourse with Jews, to read Jewish newspapers, to accustom himself to Jewish philosophy, literature and art. On the other hand, it is senseless to call an Israelite a 'Jew', though his descent is beyond question, if he has succeeded in throwing off the fetters of Ezra and Nehemiah, and if the law of Moses has no place in his brain, and contempt of others no place in his heart.”

Houston Stewart Chamberlain book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century

The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts) (1899)

Law, Art, Way, Feeling

“Primary causes are unknown to us; but are subject to simple and constant laws, which may be discovered by observation, the study of them being the object of natural philosophy.
Heat, like gravity, penetrates every substance of the universe, its rays occupy all parts of space. The object of our work is to set forth the mathematical laws which this element obeys. The theory of heat will hereafter form one of the most important branches of general physics.”

Joseph Fourier book The Analytical Theory of Heat

Source: The Analytical Theory of Heat (1878), Ch. 1, p. 1

Law, Mathematics, Nature, Study

“Another recent development is the theory of formal organizations, that is, structures planfully instituted, such as those of an army, Bureaucracy, business enterprise, etc. This theory is framed in a philosophy which accepts the premise that the only meaningful way to study organization is to study it as a system.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 1. Introduction, p. 9

Way, Business, Study

“There certainly are changes of fashion in philosophy. When a new kind is in vogue, many things in the philosophy of an earlier day, which are of permanent value and perhaps highly relevant to contemporary problems, tend to be altogether forgotten or carelessly and ignorantly dismissed, simply because they occur in an out-of-date setting and are clad in an unfashionable dress. It is now quite certain that much of permanent value in Scholastic philosophy was ignored or contemned from this cause by Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and their followers. I have little doubt that the same is true mutatis mutandis of the attitude of many present-day philosophers towards the systems of monistic idealism which were fashionable at the beginning of this century. It is consoling to a philosopher's vanity not to pry too closely into the history of his subject, for otherwise he is liable to find that his discoveries have been anticipated and his fallacies refuted in advance by predecessors whom he has ignored or despised.”

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) English philosopher

From Philosophy (I), in Inquiry (1), (1958)

History, Fashion, Problem, Change

“Plato … says a multitude can never philosophize and hence can never recognize the seriousness of philosophy or who really philosophizes. Attempting to influence the multitude results in forced prostitution.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 286.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

“History becomes one model needed to give a rounded view of our subject within the philosophy of hierarchical holographic modeling, defined as using a family of models at several levels to seek understanding of diverse aspects of a subject and thus comprehend the whole.”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Source: Metasystems Methodology, (1989), p. 6

Family, History, Understanding

“This exaltation of man over the entire natural world, however, though easily shown to accord with the teaching of Jesus, and to be clearly prefigured in it, is nearly antipodal to ordinary notions, to the current popular "philosophy" assumed to be founded on science, and to much of traditional theology. But by this fact we must not be disturbed, if we mean to be in earnest about human freedom and human capability of life really moral and religious. And the next step in our inquiry will reinforce this "divinising of the human " very decidedly.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.326

Life, World, Nature, Freedom

“For Muslims the Quran is the Word of God; it is sacred scripture, not a work of "literature," a manual of law, or a text of theology, philosophy or history although it is of incomparable literary quality, contains many injunctions about a Sacred Law, is replete with verses of metaphysical, theological, and philosophical significance, and contains many accounts of sacred history. The unique structure of the Quran and the flow of its content constitute a particular challenge to most modern readers. For traditional Muslims the Quran is not a typical "read" or manual to be studied. For most of them, the most fruitful way of interacting with the Quran is not to sit down and read the Sacred Tex from cover to cover (although there are exceptions, such as completing the whole text during Ramadan). it is, rather, to recite a section with full awareness of it as the Word of God and to meditate upon it as one whose soul is being directly addressed, as the Prophet's soul was addressed during its revelation. … In this context it must be remembered that the Quran itself speaks constantly of the Origin and the Return, of all things coming from God and returning to Him, who himself has no origin or end. As the Word of god, the Quran also seems to have no beginning and no end. Certain turns of phrase and teachings about the Divine Reality, the human condition, the life of this world, and the Hereafter are often repeated, but they are not mere repetitions. Rather each iteration of a particular word, phrase, or verse opens the door of a hidden passage to other parts of the Quran. Each coda is always a prelude to an as yet undiscovered truth.”

Seyyed Hossein Nasr book The Study Quran

The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary https://books.google.com/books?id=GVSzBgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover (2015)

Life, God, Truth, World

“If I have succeeded in explaining in a satisfactory manner, how by laborious and patient investigation, and the successful application of other branches of natural philosophy, the wonders of geology have been revealed—if I have removed but from one intelligent mind, any prejudice against scientific inquiries, which may have been excited by those who have neither the relish nor the capacity for philosophical pursuits—if I have been so fortunate as to kindle in the hearts of others, that intense and enduring love and admiration of natural knowledge, which I feel in my own,—or have illuminated the mental vision with that intellectual light, which once kindled can never be extinguished, and which reveals to the soul the beauty, and wisdom, and harmony of the works of the Eternal, I shall indeed rejoice, for then my exertions will not have been in vain. And although my humble name may be soon forgotten, and all record of my labours be effaced, yet the influence of that knowledge, however feeble it may be, which has emanated from my researches, will remain for ever; and, by conducting to new and inexhaustible fields of inquiry, prove a never-failing source of the most pure and elevated gratification.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

Vol. 2
The Wonders of Geology (1839)

Love, Wisdom, Beauty, Feeling

“Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: The unity of science, 1934/1995, p. 22

Problem

“It could even be said, perhaps, that this very opposition, this threat from the world of total work, is what characterizes the situation of philosophy today more than its own particular content. Philosophy increasingly adopts — necessarily, it seems — the character of the alien, of mere intellectual luxury, of that which seems ever more intolerable and unjustifiable, the more exclusively the demands of the daily world of work take over the world of man.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, pp. 65–66

World

“Speculative Philosophy is the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed, perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the character of a particular instance of the general scheme.”

Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) Philosopher

The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics (1962) p. viii.

Idea

“Not to know the Bible is, in some ways, to be illiterate, to neglect the very roots of philosophy, art, architecture, literature, poetry and music.”

Chris Hedges book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America

Source: American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Chapter One: Faith

Art, Music, Way, Literature

“Splendid, it has done me enormous good to finally see and read something in Switzerland that isn't bullshit. All of it is very nice, it is really something; your manifesto expresses every philosophy seeking truth, when there is no truth, only convention.”

Francis Picabia (1879–1953) French painter and writer

In a letter to Tristan Tzara, Nov. 1919, (after having received a copy of 'Manifesto Dada 3.', written by Tzara); as quoted in: TaTa Dada: The Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara, Marius Hentea, MIT Press, 12 Sep 2014, p. 115
1910's

Truth, Reading

“Much of social science has been built as a citadel against metaphysics and politics. Faithful to the outlook produced by the modern revolt against ancient philosophy, the classic social theorists were anxious to free themselves first from the illusions of metaphysics, then from the seeming arbitrariness of political judgments. They wanted to create a body of objective knowledge of society that would not be at the mercy of philosophical speculation or political controversy, and, up to a point, they succeeded. But now we see that to resolve its own dilemmas, social theory must again become, in a sense, both metaphysical and political. It must take a stand on issues of human nature and human knowledge for which no "scientific" elucidation is, or may ever be, available. And it must acknowledge that its own future is inseparable from the fate of society.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Law in Modern Societyː Toward a Criticism of Social Theory (1976), p. 266-7

Fate, Faith, Nature, Knowledge

“What the sorrowful Jew of Amsterdam called the essence of a thing, the effort that it makes to persist indefinitely in its own being, self-love, the longing for immortality, is it not perhaps the primal and fundamental condition of all reflective or human knowledge? And is it not therefore the true base, the real starting-point, of all philosophy, although the philosophers, perverted by intellectualism, do not recognize it?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), II : The Starting-Point

Love, Knowledge, Effort

“'Party,' in the general vocabulary of world intellectuals, is basically a unified social organization with a 'world-view,' an 'Ideology,' a 'philosophy of history,' and 'ideal social order,' a 'class foundation,' a 'class orientation,' a 'social leadership,' a 'political philosophy,' a 'political orientation,' a 'tradition,' a 'slogan,' a 'strategy,' a "tactic of struggle," and … a "hope" that wants to change the "status quo" in man, society, people, or a particular class, and establish the "desired status" in its stead.”

Ali Shariati (1933–1977) Iranian academic and activist

Ali Shariati, in: The Islamic Quarterly, Vol. 27-29, (1983), p. 215; as quoted in: Ali Mirsepassi (2000), Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization, p. 126.

People, World, Hope, History

“To me personally, the only function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gayly than the average businessman does, for no businessman who does not retire at fifty, if he can, is in my eyes a philosopher.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 13

Life, Personality

“There is nothing more dangerous to the shackles of complacency and the warden of fear than philosophy in action.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 154

Fear

“For such is the work of philosophy: it cures souls, draws off vain anxieties, confers freedom from desires, drives away fears.”
Nam efficit hoc philosophia: medetur animis, inanes sollicitudines detrahit, cupiditatibus liberat, pellit timores.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, Chapter IV; translation by Andrew P. Peabody
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (45 BC)

Fear, Soul, Freedom, Drawing

“The chief business of seventeenth-century philosophy was to reckon with seventeenth-century science… the chief business of twentieth-century philosophy is to reckon with twentieth-century history.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

R. G. Collingwood (1937), as cited in: Patrick Suppes (1973), Logic, methodology and philosophy of science: Proceedings.

History, Business, Science

“Windelband, the historian of philosophy, in his essay on the meaning of philosophy (Was ist Philosophie? in the first volume of his Präludien) tells us that "the history of the word 'philosophy' is the history of the cultural significance of science." He continues: "When scientific thought attains an independent existence as a desire for knowledge, it takes the name of philosophy; when subsequently knowledge as a whole divides into its various branches, philosophy is the general knowledge of the world that embraces all other knowledge. As soon as scientific thought stoops again to becoming a means to ethics or religious contemplation, philosophy is transformed into an art of life or into a formulation of religious beliefs. And when afterwards the scientific life regains its liberty, philosophy acquires once again its character as an independent knowledge of the world, and in so far as it abandons the attempt to solve this problem, it is changed into a theory of knowledge itself." Here you have a brief recapitulation of the history of philosophy from Thales to Kant, including the medieval scholasticism upon which it endeavored to establish religious beliefs. But has philosophy no other office to perform, and may not its office be to reflect upon the tragic sense of life itself, such as we have been studying it, to formulate this conflict between reason and faith, between science and religion, and deliberately to perpetuate this conflict?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy

Life, World, Faith, Religion

“The common root of modern science and Christian theology was Greek philosophy. The historical accident that caused the Christian religion to become heavily theological was the fact that Jesus was born in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire at the time when the prevailing culture was profoundly Greek.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Religion, Science, Time, Parting

“The farmer needs to learn different skills if he wants to cultivate, just as the doctor and hunter need to learn many things if they are to heal or hunt. And so must he who wishes to gain from the scripture and from Christ learn all rational and logical skills. He must go to geometry, music, grammar and philosophy itself and take from them what is useful, in order to defend his faith against those who plot to destroy it. If he does not do this, he is, as Plato says, like the athlete who turns up unprepared for the games.”

Eric Osborn (1922–2007)

Clement of Alexandria (Cambridge University Press: 2008), p. 63

Faith, Music, Game, Learning

“The world is hungry but lacks the money to buy food; and paradoxically, in the underdeveloped world, in the world of the hungry, possible ways of expanding food production are discouraged in order to keep prices up, in order to be able to eat. This is the inexorable law of the philosophy of plunder, which must cease to be the rule in relations between peoples.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

On Development (1964)

Money, People, World, Law

“To quote the words of Timaeus, in Plato, "What is that which always is, and has no birth, and what is that which is always becoming but never is? The one is apprehended by the mental processes, with reasoning, and is ever the same; the other can be guessed at by opinion in company with unreasoning sense, a thing which becomes and passes away, but never really is."
Therefore, if we crave for the goal which is worthy and fitting for man, namely happiness of life—and this is accomplished by philosophy alone and nothing else, and philosophy means… for us desire for wisdom, and wisdom the science of the truth of things… it is reasonable and most necessary to distinguish and systematize the accidental qualities of things.”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Life, Wisdom, Happiness, Truth

“But what such a philosophy overlooks is that, despite all the competition at the surface, there is a huge substratum of cooperation taken for granted that keeps the world going. […] We may indeed as individuals compete for jobs, but our function in the job, once we get it, is to contribute at the right time and place to that innumerable series of cooperative acts that eventually result in automobiles being manufactured, in cakes appearing in pastry shops, in department stores being able to serve their customers, in the trains and airlines running as scheduled. And what is important for our purposes here is that all this coordination of effort necessary for the functioning of society is of necessity achieved by language or else it is not achieved at all.”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

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Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Pooling of Knowledge, pp. 14-15

World, Effort, Appearance, Time

“Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth – there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law – but the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Source: The Junius Pamphlet (1915), Ch. 1

Peace, Law, Reality

“I have generally made it a rule to parry the inquiries and comparisons which the Americans are so apt to thrust at an Englishman. On one or two occasions, when the party has been numerous and worth powder and shot, I have, however, on being hard pressed, and finding my British blood up, found the only mode of allaying their inordinate vanity to be by resorting to this mode of argument:—"I admit all that you or any other person can, could, may, or might advance in praise of the past career of the people of America. Nay, more, I will myself assert that no nation ever did, and in my opinion none ever will, achieve such a title to respect, wonder, and gratitude in so short a period; and further still, I venture to allege that the imagination of statesmen never dreamed of a country that should in half a century make such prodigious advances in civilization and real greatness as yours has done. And now I must add, and I am sure you, as intelligent, reasonable men, will go with me, that fifty years are too short a period in the existence of nations to entitle them to the palm of history. No, wait the ordeal of wars, distresses, and prosperity (the most dangerous of all), which centuries of duration are sure to bring to your country. These are the test, and if, many ages hence, your descendants shall be able only to say of their country as much as I am entitled to say of mine now, that for seven hundred years we have existed as a nation constantly advancing in liberty, wealth, and refinement; holding out the lights of philosophy and true religion to all the world; presenting mankind with the greatest of human institutions in the trial by jury; and that we are the only modern people that for so long a time withstood the attacks of enemies so heroically that a foreign foe never put foot in our capital except as a prisoner (this last is a poser);—if many centuries hence your descendants will be entitled to say something equivalent to this, then, and not till then, will you be entitled to that crown of fame which the historian of centuries is entitled to award."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 33-34.
1830s

Men, War, People, Age

“My first essay at making a steam engine was when I was fifteen. I then made a real working; steam-engine, 1 3/4 diameter cylinder, and 8 in. stroke, which not only could act, but really did some useful work; for I made it grind the oil colours which my father required for his painting. Steam engine models, now so common, were exceedingly scarce in those days, and very difficult to be had; and as the demand for them arose, I found it both delightful and profitable to make them; as well as sectional models of steam engines, which I introduced for the purpose of exhibiting the movements of all the parts, both exterior and interior. With the results of the sale of such models I was enabled to pay the price of tickets of admission to the lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry delivered in the University of Edinburgh. About the same time (1826) I was so happy as to be employed by Professor Leslie in making models and portions of apparatus required by him for his lectures and philosophical investigations, and I had also the inestimable good fortune to secure his friendship. His admirably clear manner of communicating a knowledge of the fundamental principles of mechanical science rendered my intercourse with him of the utmost importance to myself. A hearty, cheerful, earnest desire to toil in his service, caused him to take pleasure in instructing me by occasional explanations of what might otherwise have remained obscure.”

James Nasmyth (1808–1890) Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor

James Nasmyth in: Industrial Biography: Iron-workers and Tool-makers https://books.google.nl/books?id=ZMJLAAAAMAAJ, Ticknor and Fields, 1864. p. 337

Friendship, Happiness, Pleasure, Communication

“We have here the problem of bigness. Its lesson should by now have been burned into our memory by Brandeis. The Curse of Bigness' shows how size can become a menace – both industrial and social. It can be an industrial menace because it creates gross inequalities against existing or putative competitors. It can be a social menace – because of its control of prices. Control of prices in the steel industry is powerful leverage on our economy. For the price of steel determines the price of hundreds of other articles. Our price level determines in large measure whether we have prosperity or depression – an economy of abundance or scarcity. Size in steel should therefore be jealously watched. In final analysis, size in steel is the measure of the power of a handful of men over our economy. That power can be utilized with lightning speed. It can be benign or it can be dangerous. The philosophy of the Sherman Act is that it should not exist. For all power tends to develop into a government in itself. Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people, not in the hands of an industrial oligarchy. Industrial power should be decentralized. It should be scattered into many hands so that the fortunes of the people will not be dependent on the whim or caprice, the political prejudices, the emotional stability of a few self-appointed men. The fact that they are not vicious men but respectable and social minded is irrelevant. That is the philosophy and the command of the Sherman Act. It is founded on a theory of hostility to the concentration in private hands of power so great that only a government of the people should have it.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, United States v. Columbia Steel Co., 334 U.S. 495 (1948)
Judicial opinions

Men, Hostility, People, Problem

“.. I have never managed to grasp what exactly 'pataphysics' consisted of; but in short what I have always seen in it is a desire to disconnect philosophy from the discipline of logic, and to admit incoherence as a legitimate component of it. [comment on visiting frequently the Collège de 'Pataphysique']”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Source: posthumous, Batons rompus, 1986, p. 19

“For the Romantics and for speculative philosophy, … to be critical meant to elevate thinking so far beyond all restrictive conditions that the knowledge of truth sprang forth magically, as it were, from insight into the falsehood of these restrictions.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Für die Romantiker und für die spekulative Philosophie bedeutete der Terminus kritisch: objektiv produktiv, schöpferisch aus Besonnenheit. Kritisch sein hieß die Erhebung des Denkens über alle Bindungen so weit treiben, daß gleichsam zauberisch aus der Einsicht in das Falsche der Bindungen die Erkenntnis der Wahrheit sich schwang.
The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism (1919)

Truth, Knowledge, Thinking

“Philosophy is certainly the medicine of the soul. Its aid is to be sought not from without, as in diseases of the body; and we must labour with all our resources and with all our strength to cure ourselves.”
Est profecto animi medicina, philosophia; cuius auxilium non ut in corporis morbis petendum est foris, omnibusque opibus viribus, ut nosmet ipsi nobis mederi possimus, elaborandum est.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book III, Chapter III; translation by Walter Miller
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (45 BC)

Disease, Soul

“I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when you talk in a religious strain,—not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter—you say, “it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were of His Omnipresence!” Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, “you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.” What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,—men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak and ignorant being, “servile” from his birth “to all the skiey influences,” with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind ’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of “dear children,” “brethren,” and “co-heirs with Christ of the promises,” seeking to know no further… God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race!”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Lamb's letter to Coleridge in Oct. 24th, 1796. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905). Letter 11.

Love, Men, God, Children

“During that period von Bertalanffy as a young scholar was not only interested in biology and philosophy of science. He was also interested in history and generally in humanities. He studied Oswald Spengler's theory of history and has written a paper on this topic. His interest in Spengler's theory of history anticipated von Bertalanffy's lifelong attempts to reconcile sciences with humanities.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) (1989), p. 4

History, Study, Science

“It is well enough to say that we shall be consistent, but consistent with what?... The origins of the rule? The course and tendency of development? With logic or philosophy? With the fundamental conceptions of jurisprudence? All these loyalties are possible. All have sometimes prevailed.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Page 64
Other writings, The Nature of the Judicial Process (1921)

Loyalty

“A methodology will lack the precision of a technique but will be a firmer guide to action than a philosophy. Where a technique tells you 'how' and a philosophy tells you 'what', a methodology will contain elements of both 'what' and 'how.”

Peter Checkland (1930) British management scientist

Source: Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, 1981, p. 162 cited in: Rob Pooley, Pauline Wilcox (2003) Applying UML: Advanced Applications. p. 50

“Will we solve the crises of next hundred years? asked Krulwich. “Yes, if we are honest and smart,” said Wilson. “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” Until we understand ourselves, concluded the Pulitzer-prize winning author of On Human Nature, “until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned a couple of generations ago—Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?—rationally,” we’re on very thin ground.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Quoted in Harvard Magazine http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/james-watson-edward-o-wilson-intellectual-entente from a public discussion between Wilson and James Watson moderated by NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich, September 9, 2009.

God, Understanding, Question, Nature

“Who was hiër in philosophie
To Aristotle, in our tonge, but thow?”

Thomas Occleve (1369–1426) British writer

Also, who was higher in Philosophy To Aristotle, in our tongue, but thou?
Source: Regement of Princes (c. 1412), Line 2087; vol. 3, p. 76; translation from George Carver (ed.) The Catholic Tradition in English Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1928) p. 16.

“Hard systems viewpoints are basically those held by designers and engineers who are trying to create systems to meet an understood need in an effective and economic manner. Those in the soft camp caricature the approach as head-down, concerned with optimization, obsessed with quantitative metrics and highly pragmatic. So much so, in fact, that the term system thinking has been purloined by the soft camp as though they alone thought! The soft camp use the term engineer’s philosophy, not too endearingly, to describe the hard approach, in which the requirement is stated by a customer and the engineer satisfies the requirement without question.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Source: Putting systems to work (1992), p. 6; as cited in: Stuart Anderson (2006) "Heterogeneous Modelling of Evolution for Socio-technical Systems"

Optimism, Question, Thinking

“It need hardly be said that the social philosophy of the time did not remain unaffected by the political evolution and the industrial development. Slowly sinking into men's minds all this while was the conception of a new social nexus, and a new end of social life. It was discovered (or rediscovered) that a society is something more than an aggregate of so many individual units—that it possesses existence distinguishable from those of any of its components. A perfect city became recognized as something more than any number of good citizens—something to be tried by other tests, and weighed in other balances than the individual man. The community must necessarily aim, consciously or not, at its continuance as a community: its life transcends that of any of its members; and the interests of the individual unit must often clash with those of the whole.”

Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield (1859–1947) British Baron and politician

Fabian Essays in Socialism &ndash; The Basis of Socialism &ndash; Historic http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Shaw/shwFS1.html#The%20Basis%20of%20Socialism,%20Historic,%20by%20Sidney%20Webb, The New Synthesis, I.1.47. Edited by George Bernard Shaw (1889)

Life, Men, Communication, Time

“Those who can kill themselves do, and those who can’t, teach philosophy.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 13 (p. 295)

Quotes about philosophy page 16

Quotes about philosophy
page 16