Philosophical Quotes

The spirit of moderation should also be the spirit of the lawgiver.

Men have discovered other philosophical and ethical systems, but they have not found another Jesus Christ. No one in history can match Him.

To ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. [Fr., Se moquer de la philosophie c'est vraiment philosophe.]

The philosophical spirit is not satisfied to simply accept what it is told, no matter how much prestige the teller seems to have. This is true even if the teller is a god.

Still, it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.

Philosophy is by the timid for the timid.

We are brought into this world cold, weak, and helpless. Then it gets worse.

In the philosophical dialect, a cynic takes an insult as a compliment since opposition is already his style.

Despite all philosophical differences, all major world religions have the same potential to create good human beings.

Many environmental questions are in a deep way philosophical, despite our penchant for treating them as if they were only technological, economic, or whatever.

Philosophical argument has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that was in me but my heart has always assured me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be reality.

When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence.

I do, in fact, have a book club. I meet with a couple of guys once a month of a lunchtime discussion of some interesting text, usually, but not always, philosophical.

When most people turn on their TVs, they don't expect a frank discussion of philosophical ideas in their practical context. Or any context.

Only the impossible lasts forever.

Why are we even here [on earth], what's our human nature? It's precipitating a real philosophical crisis that I find quite fascinating.

The philosophical conservative is someone willing to pay the price of other people s suffering for his principles.

If a person sings quietly to himself on the street people smile with approval; but if he talks it's not alright; they think he's crazy. The singer is presumed to be happy and the talker unhappy.

However much I may like to talk about or be interested in a more philosophical or moral agenda, [film] is, ultimately, about narrative. And it's about telling stories that are engaging and dramatic.

it is harder to be philosophical when you are young.

Everything one records contains a grain of hope, no matter how deeply it may come from despair.

Some philosophical arguments (e.g., in connection with the mind/body problem) look pretty good, while others (e.g., those that criticize moral realism) do not.

Why'd you have to say that there's always someone who can do it better than I can And don't you think that I know that walkin' on water won't make me a miracle man

The most appealing part is the feeling of learning something true - the pleasure of a truth. For me, that's mostly found in philosophical literature at the moment.

Pantagruelism is a certain gaitey of the spirit consisting in a disdain for the hazards of fortune.

Israel defined its God and its relation to that God in existential, relational terms. They did not, until quite late, approach the question of one God in an abstract philosophical way.

The spirit of poetry combines the profundity of the philosopher and the child's delight in bright pictures.

The old harlot, German philosophy, has finally turned into a church lady.

What the philosopher is seeking is not truth, but rather the metamorphosis of the world into man.

At the very moment when someone is beginning to take philosophy seriously, the whole world believes the opposite.

A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language, which breaks out again at every moment, no matter how cautious we may be.

Christianity is called the religion of pity.

The philosopher caught in the nets of language.

Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter.

What verse is for the poet, dialectical thinking is for the philosopher. He grasps for it in order to get hold of his own enchantment, in order to perpetuate it.

When Philosophy with its abstractions paints grey in grey, the freshness and life of youth has gone, the reconciliation is not a reconciliation in the actual, but in the ideal world.

Although I felt I was quite good at criticising a philosophical position, I was not very good at defending and making a case for a philosophical position.

I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it... I understand the philosophical background behind it, but I don't know a lot about it, and I don't think others know a lot about it.

But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.

I feel lucky, happy and philosophical about it all.

Listening to your own mind gives you "good reasons" why you should be fearful over unexpected events is just like being friends with someone who thinks it's funny to find new ways to hurt you!

The work with which we embark on this first volume of a series of theological studies is a work with which the philosophical person does not begin, but rather concludes.

A microscopic phantom of the universe; this is all that we are able to be.

American politics are normally a result of pragmatic and not philosophical reasoning. No one in Washington has said we now prefer multilateralism.

The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.

I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.

As our domestic fowls are said to have their original in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic thoughts have their prototypes in the thoughts of her philosophers.

Slow are the beginnings of philosophy.

Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems.

If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him.