Famous Quotes & Sayings

Michel de Montaigne

And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

Michel de Montaigne

Those sciences which govern the morals of mankind, such as Theology and Philosophy, make everything their concern: no activity is so private or so secret as to escape their attention or their jurisdiction.

Michel de Montaigne

Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce.

Michel de Montaigne

Of the opinions of philosophy I most gladly embrace those that are most solid, that is to say, most human and most our own; my opinions, in conformity with my conduct, are low and humble.

Michael Schudson

It should be apparent that the belief in objectivity in journalism, as in other professions, is not just a claim about what kind of knowledge is reliable. It is also a moral philosophy, a declaration of what kind of thinking one should engage in, in making moral decisions. It is, moreover, a political commitment, for it provides a guide to what groups one should acknowledge as relevant audiences for judging one's own thoughts and acts.

Michael Savage

Extreme liberalism is not a political philosophy. It is a mental disorder.

Michael Sandel

I almost became a political journalist, having worked as a reporter at the time of Watergate. The proximity to those events motivated me, when I wound up doing philosophy, to try to use it to move the public debate.

Mark Twain

Every man is in his own person the whole human race without a detail lacking....I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed through the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born.

Mark Levin

I realized that conservatism was the philosophy that best suited me, with its emphasis on individual liberty, personal responsibility, and merit.

Mark Levin

Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny. It's the only one. It's based on thousands of years of human experience. There is nothing narrow about the conservative philosophy. It's a liberating philosophy. It is a magnificent philosophy. It is a philosophy for the ages, for all times.

Mario Cuomo

The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.

Frank Murphy

Only by zealously guarding the rights of the most humble, the most unorthodox, and the most despised among us can freedom flourish and endure in our land.

Christine Pelosi

No Republican presidential candidate is a viable option for pro-choice voters of any political philosophy - Democrat, Republican or otherwise.

Christina Hoff Sommers

Hillary Clinton appears to believe in a form of stoicism - which is a tried and true life philosophy.

Gertrude Stein

But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.

Havelock Ellis

In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way

Havelock Ellis

Philosophy is a purely personal matter. A genuine philosopher's credo is the outcome of a single complex personality; it cannot be transferred. No two persons, if sincere, can have the same philosophy.

Hans-Georg Gadamer

The hermeneutic consciousness, which must be awakened and kept awake, recognized that in the age of science philosophy's claim of superiority has something chimerical and unreal about it. But though the will of man is more than ever intensifying its criticism of what has gone before to the point of becoming utopian or eschatological consciousness, the hermeneutic consciousness seeks to confront that will with something of the truth of remembrance: with what is still and ever again real.

George Wald

There are only two possible explanations as to how life arose: Spontaneous generation arising to evolution or a supernatural creative act of God.... There is no other possibility. Spontaneous generation was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others, but that just leaves us with only one other possibility... that life came as a supernatural act of creation by God, but I can't accept that philosophy because I do not want to believe in God. Therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation leading to evolution.

George Santayana

Philosophy may describe unreasoning, as it may describe force; it cannot hope to refute them.

George Santayana

Philosophers are as jealous as woman; each wants a monopoly of praise.

George Santayana

Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths.

George Santayana

Oxford, the paradise of dead philosophies.

George Santayana

The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character.

George Santayana

It is possible to be a master in false philosophy, easier, in fact, than to be a master in the truth, because a false philosophy can be made as simple and consistent as one pleases.

George Santayana

There are three traps that strangle philosophy: The church, the marriage bed, and the professor's chair.

George Santayana

It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.

George Santayana

The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them

George Santayana

Nietzsche said that the earth has been a madhouse long enough. Without contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression, and say that philosophy has been long enough an asylum for enthusiasts.

George Santayana

You cannot prove realism to a complete sceptic or idealist; but you can show an honest man that he is not a complete sceptic or idealist, but a realist at heart. So long as he is alive his sincere philosophy must fulfil the assumptions of his life and not destroy him.

George Santayana

Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.

George Santayana

Nietzsche was personally more philosophical than his philosophy. His talk about power, harshness, and superb immorality was the hobby of a harmless young scholar and constitutional invalid.

George Orwell

In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.