Philosopher Quotes

For my future I have no concern, and as a true philosopher, I never would have any, for I know not what it may be: as a Christian, on the other hand, faith must believe without discussion, and the stronger it is, the more it keeps silent.

It is curious to reflect, for example, upon the remarkable legend of the Philosopher's Stone, one of the oldest and most universal beliefs, the origin of which, however far back we penetrate into the records of the past, we do not probably trace its real source.

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his "divine service."

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

Well, I don't know if I can comment on Kant or Hegel because I'm no real philosopher in the sense of knowing what these people have said in any detail so let me not comment on that too much.

The heart hid still in the dark, hard as the Philosopher's Stone.

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

If you see a philosopher determining all things by means of right reason, him you shall reverence: he is a heavenly being and not of this earth.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

It has often struck me that the relation of two important members of the social body to one another has never been sufficiently considered, or treated of, so far as I know, either by the philosopher or the poet.

I see the beard and cloak, but I don't yet see a philosopher.

There are few circumstances which so strongly distinguish the philosopher, as the calmness with which he can reply to criticisms he may think undeservedly severe.

No philosopher understands his predecessors until he has re-thought their thought in his own contemporary terms.

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

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.

I'm not a minister, I'm not a philosopher, I'm not a politician, I'm in another category.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?

Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man.

A philosopher is, no doubt, entitled to examine even those distinctions that are to be found in the structure of all languages... in that case, such a distinction may be imputed to a vulgar error, which ought to be corrected in philosophy.

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

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

It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.

Jacques Derrida is a very important thinker and philosopher who has made serious contributions to both philosophy and literary criticism. Roland Barthes is the one I feel most affinity for, and Michel Foucault, well, his writing influenced my novel, 'Middlesex.'