Quotes on Philosophy

It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association

The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

The fundamental question of political philosophy, one that precedes questions about how the state should be organized, is whether there should be any state at all. Why not have anarchy?

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!

Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

I am so stupid that I cannot understand philosophy; the antithesis of this is that philosophy is so clever that it cannot comprehend my stupidity. These antitheses are mediated in a higher unity; in our common stupidity.

All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.

To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought

Life is not logic, life is not philosophy. Life is a dance, a song, a celebration! It is more like love and less like logic.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

I don't like the subtle infiltration of 'something for nothing' philosophies into the very hearthstone of the American family. I believe that 'Thou shalt earn the bread by the sweat of thy face' was a benediction and not a penalty. Work is the zest of life; there is joy in its pursuit.

We need courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit. But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart. We need energy, commitment, and courage not to run from our life nor to cover it over with any philosophy-mate rial or spiritual. We need a warrior’s heart that lets us face our lives directly, our pains and limitations, our joys and possibilities.

She - philosophy is equally helpful to the rich and poor: neglect her, and she equally harms the young and old.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

Over the years, I realized there was a Republican philosophy that I liked. And then they lost it. And LIBERTARIANS had more of it. Because what I really believe is, let's spend a little more time leaving everybody alone.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.