Famous Quotes & Sayings

Thomas Kuhn

It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers.

Thomas Frank

Surrogate motherhood has been the subject of much philosophical and political dispute over the years.

Woody Allen

We Are The Sum Total Of Our Choices...

William Shatner

Within weeks of our premiere, it became obvious that Leonard [Nimoy] and the character of Spock were becoming something of a national phenomenon. ... And to be unflatteringly frank, it bugged me. ... [Then, Gene Roddenberry] said to me the wisest thing he could possibly have uttered. He said, `Don't ever fear having good and popular people around you, because they can only enhance your own performance. The more you can play to these people, the better the show.'

William Shatner

I want to discover a truth for myself that is really true. Whether it's a piece of scientific knowledge, or a philosophical truth.

William James

There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

William James

Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way.

William James

The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man.

William James

Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

William James

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

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.

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.

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.

Richard Dawkins

My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side.

Richard P. Feynman

If you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're gonna get an answer to some deep philosophical question...you may be wrong! It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature. But my interest in science is to simply find out about the world.

Richard P. Feynman

People may come along and argue philosophically that they like one better than another; but we have learned from much experience that all philosophical intuitions about what nature is going to do fail.

Richard Dawkins

Evolution is a theory in a special philosophical sense of science, but in terms of ordinary laymen's use of language, it's a fact, .. Evolution is a fact in the same sense that it's a fact that the Earth is round and not flat, [that] the Earth goes round the Sun. Both those are also theories, but they're theories that have never been disproved and never will be disproved.

Richard Dawkins

As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect.

Saint Augustine

Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.

Robert McKee

Aristotle said time is a measure of change, and this movie is about changing in time, through time, while remaining the same person. That's a philosophical paradox and a moral dilemma. But 'Casablanca' says it's possible. You can have both. That's what it means. And that's my wish for you: that you would have both.

Robert Anton Wilson

Certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude.

Roald Dahl

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

Roger Ebert

Jacques Tati is the great philosophical tinkerer of comedy, taking meticulous care to arrange his films so that they unfold in a series of revelations and effortless delights.

Sarah Miles

Faith, for me, isn't an argument, a catechism, a philosophical “proof.” It is instead a lens, a way of experiencing life, and a willingness to act.

Virgil

Their rage supplies them with weapons.

Virgil

Age steals away all things, even the mind.

Virgil

Go forth a conqueror and win great victories.