Philosophy Quotes - Page 31

• Better contraceptives will control population only if people will use them. A nuclear holocaust can be prevented only if the conditions under which nations make war can be changed. The environment will continue to deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. We need to make vast changes in human behavior.

  B. F. Skinner

  Art, War, Practice

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• That government is best which governs the least, so taught the courageous founders of this nation. This simple declaration is diametrically opposed to the all too common philosophy that the government should protect and support one from the cradle to the grave. The policy of the Founding Fathers has made our people and our nation strong. The opposite leads inevitably to moral decay.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Courage, Strong, Father

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• I am so stupid that I cannot understand philosophy; the antithesis of this is that philosophy is so clever that it cannot comprehend my stupidity. These antitheses are mediated in a higher unity; in our common stupidity.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Clever, Stupid, Unity

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• Philosophical argument, trying to get someone to believe something whether he wants to believe it or not, is not, I have held, a nice way to behave towards someone; also it does not fit the original motivation for studying or entering philosophy. That motivation is puzzlement, curiousity, a desire to understand, not a desire to produce uniformity of belief. Most people do not want to become thought-police. The philosophical goal of explanation rather than proof not only is morally better, it is more in accord with one's philosophical motivation.

  Robert Nozick

  Motivation, Nice, Philosophical

  Robert Nozick (1981). “Philosophical Explanations”, p.13, Harvard University Press

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• Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.

  Peter Medawar

  Science, Artist, People

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.13, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I've not got a first in philosophy without being able to muddy things pretty satisfactory.

  John Banham

  Communication, Able, Firsts

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• O philosophy, you leader of life.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Leadership, Leader

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• After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus."

  James Boswell

  Science, Feet, Talking

  James Boswell (1998). “Life of Johnson”, p.333, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I believe it to be of particular importance that the scientist have an articulate and adequate social philosophy, even more important than the average man should have a philosophy. For there are certain aspects of the relation between science and society that the scientist can appreciate better than anyone else, and if he does not insist on this significance no one else will, with the result that the relation of science to society will become warped, to the detriment of everybody.

  Percy Williams Bridgman

  Believe, Philosophical, Science

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• I never said a word against eminent men of science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall of man, they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now they talk about the survival of the fittest: they think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion, they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Fall, Mean, Science

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• I see I have made my self a slave to Philosophy.

  Isaac Newton

  Philosophical, Science, Self

  Stephen Jordan Rigaud, Isaac Barrow, John Flamsteed, Isaac Newton, Johannes Wallis (1841). “Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century, Including Letters of Barrow, Flamsteed, Wallis, and Newton, Printed from the Originals in the Collection of the Earl of Macclesfield (published by Stephen Jordan Rigaud)”, p.405

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• I shall no doubt be blamed by certain scientists, and, I am afraid, by some philosophers, for having taken serious account of the alleged facts which are investigated by Psychical Researchers. I am wholly impenitent about this. The scientists in question seem to me to confuse the Author of Nature with the Editor of Nature; or at any rate to suppose that there can be no productions of the former which would not be accepted for publication by the latter. And I see no reason to believe this.

  C. D. Broad

  Philosophical, Taken, Believe

  "The Mind and Its Place in Nature".

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• Philosophy becomes poetry, and science imagination, in the enthusiasm of genius.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Science, Imagination, Poetry

  "The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, chapter XII, 1795-1822.

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• Philosophy dwells aloft in the Temple of Science, the divinity of its inmost shrine; her dictates descend among men, but she herself descends not : whoso would behold her must climb with long and laborious effort, nay, still linger in the forecourt, till manifold trial have proved him worthy of admission into the interior solemnities.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Philosophical, Science, Men

  Thomas Carlyle (1864). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays ...”, p.32

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• Superficially, it might be said that the function of the kidneys is to make urine; but in a more considered view one can say that the kidneys make the stuff of philosophy itself.

  Homer Smith

  Science, Views, Might

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• The Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk unscientifically about science.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Science, Talking, Differences

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• The ductless glands secrete among other things our moods, our aspirations, our philosophy of life.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophical, Science, Mood

  Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1930-1935”, Ivan R Dee

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• The moment philosophy supposes it can find a final and comprehensive solution, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes either apologetics or propaganda.

  John Dewey

  Philosophical, Science, Finals

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Ernest Nagel (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938”, p.42, SIU Press

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• The progress of mankind is due exclusively to the progress of natural sciences, not to morals, religion or philosophy.

  Justus von Liebig

  Science, Religion, Progress

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• The science of systematics has long been affected by profound philosophical preconceptions, which have been all the more influential for being usually covert, even subconscious.

  George Gaylord Simpson

  Philosophical, Science, Long

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• Without the English, reason and philosophy would still be in the most despicable infancy in France.

  John Dewey

  Philosophical, Science, France

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• The philosophy of jazz represents tolerance, teamwork and inclusion. That's what America is about. The music reflects that.

  T. S. Monk

  Teamwork, America, Tolerance

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• When I could have used a wife, I could not support one; and when I could support one, I no longer needed any

  Immanuel Kant

  Wife, Support, Used

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• Desire is the very essence of man

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Essence, Desire

  Baruch Spinoza (2006). “The Essential Spinoza: Ethics and Related Writings”, p.93, Hackett Publishing

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• The most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes, should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspiration, Journey, Mind

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1858). “The life and letters of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography and select correspondence, from original manuscripts”, p.187

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