quotations about philosophy
A philosopher is one who disengages himself from all former prejudices, masters his passions, and learns to think, speak, and act, according to rule and order. He is ready to teach, but more ready to learn. He is of all, and yet of no sect.... If he thinks with few, it is not because they are few, but because there are few that think.
ANNE MARY PERCEVAL
Miscellaneous Thoughts, Maxims, Essays, Aphorisms, and Extracts
Philosophy: impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us -- but not suckle us.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Journals and Papers, 1837
Too much philosophy makes men mad.
ALAN JUDD
The Noonday Devil
You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy
But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!
BERTOLT BRECHT
The Threepenny Opera
To ridicule philosophy is really to act the part of a philosopher.
BLAISE PASCAL
attributed, Day's Collacon
The philosopher is neither a chemist, a smith, a merchant, or a manufacturer; but he both teaches and is taught by all of them; and his prayer is that the intellectual light may be as general as the solar, and uncontrolled.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
A scientists asks why philosophy matters. The philosopher counters and asks "Why does science matter?" The scientist thinks for a moment before replying that science matters because ... and here, the philosopher interrupts him and says. "You're doing philosophy."
ERIC METAXAS
"Bill Nye the Science Guy Doesn't Get Philosophy", Christian Post, April 2, 2016
In wonder all philosophy began, in wonder it ends, and admiration fills up the interspace: but the first is the wonder-offspring of ignorance, the last is the parent of adoration. The first is the birth-throe of our knowledge; the last is its euthanasy and apotheosis.
STEPHEN TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Aids to Reflection