Quotes on Philosophy

A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

I have spent a lot of my career working on normative political philosophy, developing the 'capabilities approach' to social justice. I have also spent a lot of my career working on the structure of the emotions, and their role in human life.

St. Paul would say to the philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to attain the Divine. That is why all pre-Christian philosophy is theological at its summit.

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation, and society of mankind. Good, and evil, are names that signify our appetites, and aversions; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men, are different.

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.

He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.

Neither one should hesitate about dedicating oneself to philosophy when young, nor should get tired of doing it when one's old, because no one is ever too young or too old to reach one's soul's healthy.

From the very beginning, existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity.

The best philosophy is to do one's duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot; bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it.

An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.

India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.

There is no philosophy that is not to some extent also theology.

We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers.

The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.

The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed.

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.

To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.

To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.

...when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.