Philosophy Quotes

This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

All philosophies, if you ride them, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

I went off to college planning to major in math or philosophy-- of course, both those ideas are really the same idea.

Who you are isn't tied solely to what you say, even though it may feel that way to you now.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

True philosophy invents nothing; it merely establishes and describes what is.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

Philosophy is written in this grand book - I mean the Universe - which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.

If we did not bring to the examinations of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them.

Consciousness is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation.

You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.

We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities.