Philosopher Quotes - Page 36

• The surface of the Moon is not smooth, uniform, and precisely spherical as a great number of philosophers believe it to be, but is uneven, rough, and full of cavities and prominences, being not unlike the face of the Earth, relieved by chains of mountains and deep valleys.

  Galileo Galilei

  Believe, Moon, Numbers

  Galileo Galilei, Raymond John Seeger (1966). “Men of physics: Galileo Galilei, his life and his works”

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• Science will...produce the data..., but never the
  full meaning. For perceiving real significance, we
  shall need...most of all the brains of poets, [and]
  also those of artists, musicians, philosophers,
  historians, writers in general.

  Lewis Thomas

  Real, Artist, Data

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• Many men talk like philosophers and live like fools.

  Philip K. Dick

  Men, Fool

  Philip K. Dick “13 Short Stories”, Lulu.com

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• Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.

  John Dewey

  Philosophy, Men, Problem

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Lewis E. Hahn (2008). “The Middle Works, 1899-1924: 1916-1917”, p.46, SIU Press

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• The code of Manu differs from the bible. By means of it the nobles, the philosophers, and the warriors keep the whip hand over the majority. It is full of noble valuations; it shows a feeling of perfection, an acceptance of life, and triumphant feeling toward self and life.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mean, Warrior, Acceptance

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Writings of Nietzsche: Volume 1”, Lulu.com

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• Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine.

  Plato

  Memories, Reality, Wings

  Plato, Alexander Nehamas, Paul Woodruff (1995). “Phaedrus”, p.37, Hackett Publishing

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• The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

  Plato

  Divine Order, Divinity, Characteristics

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• A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Thinking, Ideas, Vacuums

  Alfred North Whitehead, Lucien Price (2001). “Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead”, p.225, David R. Godine Publisher

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• The history of India for many centuries had been happier, less fierce, and more dreamlike than any other history. In these favorable conditions, they built a character - meditative and peaceful and a nation of philosophers such as could nowhere have existed except in India.

  H. G. Wells

  Character, Peaceful, India

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• The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up.

  Michelangelo Antonioni

  Blow, Reality, Want

  "Michelangelo Antonioni : The Complete Films" edited by Seymour Chatman and Paul Duncan, (p. 113), 2004.

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• Whether religion is man-made is a question for philosophers or theologians. But the forms are man-made. They are a human response to something. As a historian of religions, I am interested in those expressions.

  Mircea Eliade

  Men, Expression, Form

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• He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Kings, Philosophy, Thinking

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1971). “The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau”

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• The essayist . . . can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast.

  E. B. White

  Philosophy, Devil, Matter

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.215, Cornell University Press

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• I see the beard and cloak, but I don't yet see a philosopher. -Video barbam et pallium; philosophum nondum video

  Aulus Gellius

  Philosophy, Video, Beard

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• There may have been somewhere, as a few eighteenth-century philosophers dreamed, a group of peaceful men who got together one evening after work and drew up a Social Contract to form the state. But nobody has been able to find an actual record of it. Practically all the governments whose origins are historically established were the result of conquest-of one tribe by another, one city by another, one people by another. Of course there have been constitutional conventions, but they merely changed the working rules of governments already in being.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Peace, Men, Cities

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• I wish, my dear Kepler, that we could have a good laugh together at the extraordinary stupidity of the mob. What do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or the Moon or my glass [telescope].

  Galileo Galilei

  Science, Thinking, Moon

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• States will never be happy until
  rulers become philosophers or
  philosophers become rulers.

  Plato

  States, Rulers

  Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Aristotle (2012). “The Modern Library Collection of Greek and Roman Philosophy 3-Book Bundle: Meditations; Selected Dialogues of Plato; The Basic Works of Aristotle”, p.15, Modern Library

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• Al-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out al-Ghazali's Ash?arite theology with unusual clarity and provides important background for such well-known works as his autobiographical Deliverance from Error and his attack on Avicenna in The Incoherence of the Philosophers. This first English-language translation, with notes that bring out the argumentation and background of the work, is thus very much to be welcomed.

  Peter Adamson

  Philosophical, Errors, Islam

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• In PLATO AT THE GOOGLEPLEX, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein set out to showcase, in sometimes startling ways, the continuing relevance of a classic philosopher. But what's remarkable is that she actually brings off this tour de force with both madcap brilliance and commanding authority.

  Michael Dirda

  Plato, Way, Classic

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• I've argued that many of what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In chimpanzees and other animals, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores.

  Frans de Waal

  Dog, Animal, Empathy

  "Confessions of a Lonely Atheist" by Natalie Angier, partners.nytimes.com. January 14, 2001.

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• And we daily in our experiments electrise bodies plus or minus, as we think proper. [These terms we may use till your Philosophers give us better.] To electrise plus or minus, no more needs to be known than this, that the parts of the Tube or Sphere, that are rubb'd, do, in the Instant of Friction, attract the Electrical Fire, and therefore take it from the Thin rubbing; the same parts immediately, as the Friction upon them ceases, are disposed to give the fire they have received, to any Body that has less.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Science, Thinking, Fire

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• Even if a king defeats his enemy in battle, that still doesn't settle anything. There are other, less numerous armies of philosophers and scientists, and their contests determine the true triumph or defeat of nations.
  One scholar is matched with another; one creative mind with another; and one judicious temperament with his counterpart. A victory won on that field counts for three won by force of arms.

  Cyrano de Bergerac

  Kings, Army, Creative

  "The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon". Book by Cyrano de Bergerac, 1657.

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• To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat from the world, as it is man's, into the world, as it is God's.

  Abraham Cowley

  Men, Cities, World

  Abraham Cowley, Samuel Johnson (1822). “The Poems of Abraham Cowley ...”

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• A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?'

  Roger Scruton

  Risk, Retorts, Interpretation

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• The fact is, every thinker, every philosopher, the moment he is forced to abandon his one-sided intellectual occupation by practical necessity, immediately returns to the general point of view of mankind.

  Ernst Mach

  Views, Intellectual, Occupation

  Ernst Mach (1959). “The Analysis of Sensations: And the Relation of the Physical to the Psychical”

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