Famous Quotes & Sayings

William James

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.

William James

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

William James

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

William James

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

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

Science without philosophy, facts without perspective and valuation, cannot save us from havoc and despair. Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

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.

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

Never judge a philosophy by its abuse.

W. E. B. Du Bois

One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer. We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner . . . and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.

Zack Snyder

For whatever reason I was always obsessed with the potential of humanity's physicality. Especially since we grew up with such a non-physical philosophy.

Zack Snyder

You can't will something into being. If you follow that philosophy all the way, to will something into being, that's animal style. That's what man does. But if you're looking at the philosophy correctly, and I never did - I like to think I did sometimes - you have to do it without ego, without the I. You have to separate yourself.

Zane Grey

A good rule of angling philosophy is not to interfere with any fishermans ways of being happy, unless you want to be hated.