Philosophical Quotes - Page 38

• Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy; it cannot survive without a philosophical base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go.

  Ayn Rand

  Philosophy, Science, Survival

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”

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• How then did we come to the "standard model"? And how has it supplanted other theories, like the steady state model? It is a tribute to the essential objectivity of modern astrophysics that this consensus has been brought about, not by shifts in philosophical preference or by the influence of astrophysical mandarins, but by the pressure of empirical data.

  Steven Weinberg

  Philosophy, Science, Objectivity

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• Mathematics has a threefold purpose. It must provide an instrument for the study of nature. But this is not all: it has a philosophical purpose, and, I daresay, an aesthetic purpose.

  Henri Poincare

  Nature, Science, Purpose

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• Natura nihil agit frustra [Nature does nothing in vain] is the only indisputible axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature; not any thing framed to fill up empty cantons, and unncecessary spaces.

  Thomas Browne

  Nature, Philosophy, Science

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• I also ask you my friends not to condemn me entirely to the mill of mathematical calculations, and allow me time for philosophical speculations, my only pleasures.

  Johannes Kepler

  Philosophy, Science, Pleasure

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• The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand.

  Elias Canetti

  Hands, Order, Literature

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• Actual philosophers... are commanders and law-givers: they say "thus it shall be!", it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical laborers, of all those who have subdued the past - they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mean, Past, Hands

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1973). “Beyond good and evil: prelude to a philosophy of the future”, Penguin Classics

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• No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that 'In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth'.

  C. S. Lewis

  Heaven, Religion, Atheism

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.80, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• ..when, in my philosophical disquisitions, I deny a providence and a future state, I undermine not the foundations of society, but advance principles, which they themselves, upon their own topics, if they argue consistently, must allow to be solid and satisfactory.

  David Hume

  Atheism, Foundation, Principles

  David Hume (1758). “Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects”, p.358

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• Science is a human activity, and the best way to understand it is to understand the individual human beings who practise it. Science is an art form and not a philosophical method. The great advances in science usually result from new tools rather than from new doctrines. ... Every time we introduce a new tool, it always leads to new and unexpected discoveries, because Nature's imagination is richer than ours.

  Freeman Dyson

  Nature, Art, Philosophy

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• 'Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings and this commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Compassion, Animal, Vegetarianism

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• In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Health, Mind, Body

  Tusculanarum Disputationum Bk III

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• The study of the human brain and its disease remains one of the greatest scientific and philosophical challenges ever undertaken.

  Floyd E. Bloom

  Challenges, Brain, Disease

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• Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity it is part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical speculation.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Buddhism, Long, Heritage

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “The Antichrist”, p.47, Friederich Nietzsche

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• The sense that the meaning of the universe had evaporated was what seemed to escape those who welcomed Darwin as a benefactor of mankind. Nietzsche considered that evolution presented a correct picture of the world, but that it was a disastrous picture. His philosophy was an attempt to produce a new world-picture which took Darwinism into account but was not nullified by it.

  R. J. Hollingdale

  Philosophy, Science, World

  R. J. Hollingdale (2001). “Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy”, p.73, Cambridge University Press

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• In my opinion a mathematician, in so far as he is a mathematician, need not preoccupy himself with philosophy-an opinion, moreover, which has been expressed by many philosophers.

  Henri Lebesgue

  Philosophy, Math, Science

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• Indiana Jones: Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. ... So forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and "X" never, ever marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.

  Jeffrey Boam

  Philosophy, Reading, Science

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• The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. And this is by no means so difficult a task as the history of philosophy would lead one to suppose. For if there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery.

  A.J. Ayer

  Truth, Philosophy, Mean

  "Language, Truth, and Logic" by A.J. Ayer, (Ch. 1), 1936.

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• The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful.

  A.J. Ayer

  Philosopher, Disputes, Traditional

  "Language, Truth, and Logic" by A.J. Ayer, (Ch. 1), 1936.

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• What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Philosophy, Rational

  Philosophy of Right (1821)

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• It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true

  Bertrand Russell

  Atheist, Philosophy, Believe

  Sceptical Essays (1928) "On the Value of Scepticism"

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• Happiness is the highest good

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Highest

  Aristotle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aristotle (Illustrated)”, p.3126, Delphi Classics

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• Whatever is reasonable is true, and whatever is true is reasonable

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Reasonable

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• Man is condemned to be free

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Freedom, Philosophy, Men

  1946 L'Existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism and Humanism,1948) (translated by Philip Mairet).

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• Happiness lies in virtuous activity, and perfect happiness lies in the best activity, which is contemplative

  Aristotle

  Lying, Perfect, Virtuous

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