Famous Quotes & Sayings

Joseph Priestley

How glorious, then, is the prospect, the reverse of all the past, which is now opening upon us, and upon the world. Government, we may now expect to see, not only in theory and in books but in actual practice, calculated for the general good, and taking no more upon it than the general good requires, leaving all men the enjoyment of as many of their natural rights as possible, and no more interfering with matters of religion, with men's notions concerning God, and a future state, than with philosophy, or medicine.

Jules Michelet

Woe be to him who tries to isolate one department of knowledge from the rest. All science is one: language, literature and history, physics, mathematics and philosophy; subjects which seem the most remote from one another are in reality connected, or rather they all form a single system.

Josh Billings

It strains a man's philosophy the worst kind to laugh when he gets beat.

Karl Jaspers

As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.

Karl Jaspers

The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought.

Karl Jaspers

Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.

Karl Jaspers

Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension.

Karl Jaspers

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.

Karl Jaspers

At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.

Karl Jaspers

Philosophy as practice does not mean its restriction to utility or applicability, that is, to what serves morality or produces serenity of soul.

Karl Jaspers

It is the search for the truth, not possession of the truth which is the way of philosophy. Its questions are more relevant than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.

Karl Barth

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

Karl Barth

The relation of this God with this man; the relation of this man with this God--this is the only theme of the Bible and of philosophy.

Karl Kraus

Truth is a clumsy servant that breaks the dishes while washing them.

Julius Charles Hare

If your divines are not philosophers, your philosophy will neither be divine, nor able to divine.

Julius Charles Hare

The business of philosophy is to circumnavigate human nature.

Oswald Spengler

Philosophy, the love of Wisdom, is at the very bottom defence against the incomprehensible.

Ouida

A pipe is a pocket philosopher,--a truer one than Socrates, for it never asks questions. Socrates must have been very tiresome, when one thinks of it.

Philosophy, which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself because he was a thinking being and to say, 'I think therefore I am," now raises him to say ... "I think, therefore I am not," (unless he takes thought into consideration only in that humble region where it is confused with action).

Julian Huxley

Will our Philosophy to later Life Seem but a crudeness of the planet's youth, Our Wisdom but a parasite of Truth?

Judy Tenuta

I got an A in philosophy because I proved my professor didn't exist.

Paul Tillich

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

Paul Tillich

Only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.

Paul Tillich

Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.

Paul Kurtz

Secular humanism does not have the essential attributes of a religion: belief in a deity, the wish for some sort of afterlife, sacred dogma or texts, or an absolutist moral creed. Instead, it expresses a philosophical and ethical point of view, and it draws upon the scientific method in formulationg its naturalistic view of the nature.

Paul Davies

"Are we alone in the universe?" This is a question which goes back to the dawn of history, but for most of human history it has been in the province of religion and philosophy. Fifty or something years ago, however, it became part of science.

Mack McLarty

I believe that white frame house is worthy of more than a nod of nostalgia, because the values President Clinton learned there and in Hope formed the core of his political philosophy.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Atheism is based upon a materialist philosophy, which holds that nothing exists but natural phenomena. There are no supernatural forces or entities, nor can there be any. Nature simply exists.

Haruki Murakami

You know, they've got these chocolate assortments, and you like some but you don't like others? And you eat all the ones you like, and the only ones left are the ones you don't like as much? I always think about that when something painful comes up. Now I just have to polish these off, and everything'll be OK. Life is a box of chocolates. I suppose you could call it a philosophy.

Haruki Murakami

Me, I've seen 45 years, and I've only figured out one thing. That's this: if a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn. I read somewhere that they said there's even different philosophies in razors. Fact is, if it weren't for that, nobody'd survive.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

The work with which we embark on this first volume of a series of theological studies is a work with which the philosophical person does not begin, but rather concludes.

Han Fei

He who claims to be sure of something for which there is no evidence is a fool, and he who acts on the basis of what cannot be proved is an imposter.

Gustave Flaubert

The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded.