Philosopher Quotes - Page 14

Problems come and go over time, and to understand why is a difficult historical task. If one wanted to find the origin of a problem, historical research and close attention to texts is what is needed, not unconstrained speculation about the 'pictures' that philosophers must be in the grip of.

As a philosopher, you define constraints for any good theory explaining what you are interested in, then you go out and search for help in other disciplines.

Every philosophical thinker hails it [The Origin of Species] as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury of liberalism.

One of the old philosophers says that it is the part of wisdom to sometimes seem a fool; but in our day there are too many ready-made ones to render this a desirable policy.

The philosopher is he to whom the highest has descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly brother of all.

With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.

Are you a philosopher? Where's your sponge?

In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this?

Comedians are thinkers. The best ones are akin to philosophers, in my opinion.

Suppose cats became philosophers, they would see a cat universe and have a cat solution of the problem of the universe, and a cat ruling it. So we see from this that our explanation of the universe is not the whole of the solution.

I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor and I love the poor. I see what they call the poor of this country and how many there are who feel for them!

The rank and file are not philosophers, they are not educated to think for themselves, but simply to accept, unquestioned, whatever comes.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

The philosopher is someone who doesn't know, but who wants to find out.

Humour is human. Why? Well, because the Philosopher, Aristotle, says so.

I would like to be a philosopher in ancient Athens and a poet in ancient China.

Economists can be called the worldly philosophers for they sought to embrace in a scheme of philosophy the most worldly of man's activities-his drive for wealth.

Zoological taxonomists in general are inclined to be practical workers rather than philosophers, if only because they face such an unending task that they are not encouraged to sit back and philosophize.

The French philosopher Pierre-Hyacinthe Azaïs (1766-1845) formalized the statement that good and evil fortune are exactly balanced in that they produce for each person an equivalent result.

Good comedians are great philosophers.

When we call a philosopher distinguished, we are not saying that she is worthy and not saying that she is recognized, but we are saying that she occupies the intersection of both - that she is recognized and worthy; even that she is recognized because she's worthy.

The philosophers talk across the centuries exclusively to one another, hermetically sealed from any influences derived from non-philosophical discourse.

Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.

I don't see myself as a philosopher. That's awfully boring.