Famous Quotes & Sayings

William James

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

William James

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

William James

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

William James

The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.

William James

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

William Gilmore Simms

Philosophy has its bugbears, as well as superstition.

William Gilmore Simms

Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul.

William Gilbert

Philosophy is for the few.

Will Cuppy

My philosophy of life can be summed up in four words: It can't be helped.

Will Ferrell

Personal philosophy: Clothing optional

Will Durant

A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole. Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse, and is at best but a brave stupidity; but let us hope that, like philosophy, it will always lure some rash spirits into its fatal depths.

Will Durant

In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.

Will Durant

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt -- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.

Will Durant

Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.

Will Durant

It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.

Will Durant

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.

Will Durant

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

Sarah Palin

If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?

Sarah Brightman

Philosophy changes day by day.

Sarah Ban Breathnach

My philosophy is very simple: when in doubt, take a bath.

Willard Van Orman Quine

The three main medieval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.

Willard Van Orman Quine

My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat--a boat which, to revert to Neurath's figure as I so often do, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.

Willard Van Orman Quine

The strategy of semantic ascent is that it carries the discussion into a domain where both parties are better agreed on the objects (viz., words) and on the main terms connecting them. Words, or their inscriptions, unlike points, miles, classes and the rest, are tangible objects of the size so popular in the marketplace, where men of unlike conceptual schemes communicate at their best. The strategy is one of ascending to a common part of two fundamentally disparate conceptual schemes, the better to discuss the disparate foundations. No wonder it helps in philosophy.

Willard Van Orman Quine

It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.

Willard Van Orman Quine

It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

Willard Van Orman Quine

We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it, bit by bit, plank by plank, though meanwhile there is nothing to carry us along but the evolving conceptual scheme itself. The philosopher's task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea.

Wilbur Smith

They do say that socialism is the ideal philosophy-just as long as you have capitalists to pay for it.

Ronald Reagan

I have seen the rise of fascism and communism. Both philosophies glorify the arbitrary power of the state... But both theories fail. Both deny those God-given liberties that are the inalienable right of each person on this planet, indeed, they deny the existence of God.

Saina Nehwal

My philosophy is to not be scared of anyone. If I play well, great; if I dont, I learn from the match and move on.

Saint Augustine

Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

Saint Augustine

Don't you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?

Saint Augustine

There is no possible source of evil except good.

Saint Augustine

And I entered and beheld with the eye of my soul... the Light Unchangeable... He that knows the Truth, knows what that Light is; and he that knows It, knows Eternity.