Famous Quotes & Sayings

Voltaire

Why, since we are always complaining of our ills, are we constantly employed in redoubling them?

Voltaire

History should be written as philosophy.

Voltaire

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

Voltaire

The system of Descartes... seemed to give a plausible reason for all those phenomena; and this reason seemed more just, as it is simple and intelligible to all capacities. But in philosophy, a student ought to doubt of the things he fancies he understands too easily, as much as of those he does not understand.

Voltaire

Superstition sets the whole world in flames, but philosophy douses them.

Voltaire

The necessity of saying something, the embarrassment produced by the consciousness of having nothing to say, and the desire to exhibit ability, are three things sufficient to render even a great man ridiculous.

Voltaire

Pleasantry is never good on serious points, because it always regards subjects in that point of view in which it is not the purpose to consider them.

Voltaire

When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when a man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics.

William Strunk, Jr.

In his Philosophy of Style, Herbert Spencer gives two sentences to illustrate how the vague and general can be turned into the vivid and particular: In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of its penal code will be severe. In proportion as men delight in battles, bullfights, and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning, and the rack.

William Ralph Inge

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other peoples.

William Ralph Inge

In praising science, it does not follow that we must adopt the very poor philosophies which scientific men have constructed. In philosophy they have much more to learn than to teach.

William Ralph Inge

To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.

William Butler Yeats

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.

William Butler Yeats

The night can sweat with terror as before We pieced our thoughts into philosophy, And planned to bring the world under a rule, Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.

Wilhelm Wundt

Philosophical reflection could not leave the relation of mind and spirit in the obscurity which had satisfied the needs of the naive consciousness.

Wilhelm von Humboldt

To behold, is not necessary to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails.

Walter Savage Landor

Religion is the eldest sister of philosophy: on whatever subjects they may differ, it is unbecoming in either to quarrel, and most so about their inheritance.

Walter Savage Landor

A true philosopher is beyond the reach of fortune.

Walter Savage Landor

We may receive so much light as not to see, and so much philosophy as to be worse than foolish.

Walter Savage Landor

All schools of philosophy, and almost all authors, are rather to be frequented for exercise than for weight.

Walter Scott

A Finnan haddock has a relish of a peculiar and delicate flavour, inimitable on any other coast than that of Aberdeenshire. Some of our Edinburgh philosophers tried to produce their equal in vain. I was one of a party at dinner where the philosophical haddocks were placed in competition with the genuine Finnan fish. These were served round without distinguishing whence they came; but only one gentleman out of twelve present espoused the cause of philosophy.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken -- errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs.

Winston Churchill

No one should waste a day.

Winston Churchill

Tidiness is a virtue, symmetry is often a constituent of beauty...

Winston Churchill

One can usually put one's thoughts better in one's own words.

Winston Churchill

Nothing should be done for spite's sake.

Winston Churchill

How often in life must one be content with what one can get!

Winston Churchill

Nothing is perfect on the human stage...

Winston Churchill

You must look at facts, because they look at you.

Winston Churchill

Those who serve supreme causes must not consider what they can get but what they can give.

Winston Churchill

There never will be enough for everything while the world goes on. The more that is given the more there will be needed.

Winston Churchill

There is not one single social or economic principle or concept in the philosophy of the Russian Bolshevik which has not been realized, carried into action, and enshrined in immutable laws a million years ago by the white ant.

Winston Churchill

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.