“To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe.”
“I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.”
“Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.”
“The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.”
“It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.”
“Then, like an old-time orator impressively he rose; I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.”
“If he really thinks there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.”
“The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.”
“Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.”
“The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food.”
“When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.”
“The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.”
“The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.”
“Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.”
“Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.”
“The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man.”
“In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.”
“Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.”
“The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.”
“And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.”
“Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of this great allegory -- the world? Then we pygmies must be content to have out paper allegories but ill comprehended.”
“All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?”
“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.”
“Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained, after his time, but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737.”
“Reason, progress, unselfishness, a wide historical perspective, expansiveness, generosity, enlightened self-interest. I had heard it all my life, and it filled me with despair.”
“Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.”
“Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.”
“The origins of disputes between philosophers is, that one class of them have undertaken to raise man by displaying his greatness, and the other to debase him by showing his miseries.”
“Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.”
“How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's lute, and a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.”