Western Philosophy Quotes

• The unexamined life is not worth living.

  Socrates

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  In Plato 'Apology' 38a

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• If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

  Rene Descartes

  Life, Truth, Real

  "Principles of Philosophy". Book by Rene Descartes, 1644.

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  Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

  Bertrand Russell

  Education, Stupid, School

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.578, Routledge

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• You cannot step into the same river twice.

  Heraclitus

  Inspirational, Change, Philosophical

  Heraclitus (2003). “Fragments”, p.97, Penguin

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• A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

  Bertrand Russell

  Clever, Smart, Stupid

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• Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Mathematics, Mathematical Beauty

  "The Study of Mathematics" (1902)

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• The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Men, Instinct

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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• Man is the measure of all things.

  Protagoras

  Philosophical, Men, Greek

  Quoted in Plato, Theaetetus

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• William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was 'A smell of petroleum prevails throughout'.

  Bertrand Russell

  Laughter, Men, Smell

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.109, Routledge

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• The gift of truth excels all other gifts.

  Gautama Buddha

  Buddhist, Truth, Philosophy

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• In the western philosophy you can't perceive infinities at every moment. It's not there to do.

  Frederick Lenz

  Philosophy, Buddhism, Humanity

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• In point of fact, Western philosophy has never set itself free of Christianity: wherever Christianity did not have a hand in the construction of modern philosophy it served instead as a stumbling block.

  Jacques Maritain

  Block, Philosophy, Hands

  Jacques Maritain (1955). “An essay on Christian philosophy”

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• Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it?

  Michel de Montaigne

  Art, Children, Philosophy

  Michel de Montaigne (1991). “The essays of Michel de Montaigne”, Lane, Allen

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• To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Birthday, Educational, Philosophy

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• ..I sought a world philosophy-or an integral philosophy-that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details-that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos, a plausible Theory of Everything.

  Ken Wilber

  Philosophy, Together, World

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• The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Legacy, Western

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• If there are more than two sexes, then so be it and, of course, the assumption that there are two helps shape, as many have argued, the binary logic that underpins much of the history of western philosophy.

  Alison Assiter

  Sex, Philosophy, Two

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• (on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Writing, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.465, Routledge

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• Before the scientific rationalism took hold of our minds and before we became succumbed to a materialistic worldview, the Western philosophy was holistic and relational, and even now there are many scientists in the West seeing things totally interconnected.

  Satish Kumar

  Philosophy, Mind, West

  Interview with Frank Lipman, www.drfranklipman.com. April 14, 2009.

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