Interesting Philosophical Quotes & Sayings

In philosophy, the principles are more interesting than the examples. In literature, the examples are more interesting than the principles. — Mason Cooley

Wondering how evil had come into the world or what happens to a person after he dies: an interesting philosophical exercise, but also curiously pointless, since evil and death happened, regardless of the why and the how and the what-it-meant. — Joe Hill

After having grown up surrounded by so much manufactured beauty, Amara had come to want something different. Something that wasn't necessarily beautiful. Something imperfect, interesting, and perhaps even ugly. — Morgan Rhodes

It was like wondering how evil had come into the world or what happens to a person after he dies: an interesting philosophical exercise, but also curiously pointless, since evil and death happened, regardless of the why and the how and what-it-meant. — Joe Hill

I'm not a sociologist, and the novel has often concerned itself with sociology. It's one of the generating forces that's made fiction interesting to people. But that's not my concern. I'm interested in psychology. And also certain philosophical questions about the world. — Jonathan Lethem

For me, Stalinism was even a greater philosophical problem than Nazism. Under Nazism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed, no questions asked, you had nothing to prove. Under Stalinism, of course, most [victims] were on trial for false accusations; most of them were not traitors. There is one interesting feature: that they were tortured or through some kind of blackmail forced to confess to being traitors. — Slavoj Zizek

Would you ask a man who bags groceries if he fears death not because it is death but because there are still some interesting groceries he would like to bag? — Don DeLillo

If some people read my fiction and see it as fundamentally about philosophical ideas, what it probably means is that these are pieces where the characters are not as alive and interesting as I meant them to be. — David Foster Wallace

A man is only as effective as the effect he has on his surroundings,' Gordon was saying. 'And if a man is not effective, if his very being is as insubstantial as thought, then what is this man? Is he a man? Or is he merely the thought of a man? — Derek Landy

That's an interesting thing about an object. One object speaks volumes about the company that produced it and its values and priorities. — Jonathan Ive

Poetry is a bad medium for philosophy. Everything in the philosophical poem has to satisfy irreconcilable requirements: for instance, the last demand that we should make of philosophy (that it be interesting) is the first we make of a poem; the philosophical poet has an elevated and methodical, but forlorn and absurd air as he works away at his flying tank, his sewing-machine that also plays the piano. — Randall Jarrell

Mental reflection os so much more interesting than tv [that]it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant, but it never is. — Robert M. Pirsig

If only yesterday could be my tomorrow then today wouldn't even matter. — Carroll Bryant

I really enjoyed my degree, for me it was the best course you can do. To be able to study the brain and nervous system and the mind with a scientific approach is just incredible! Its philosophical, psychological and biological, three very interesting areas to me. — Freddie Stroma

Andy Brown is one of our most interesting and exciting younger poets. With its love of ideas and language, his work demonstrates that there need be no barriers in poetry; that the philosophical, the lyrical and the playful can be combined in work of assured and generous vision. — John Burnside

'Ape House' is an ambitious novel in several ways, for which it is to be admired, and it is certainly an easy read, but because Gruen is not quite prepared for the philosophical implications of her subject, it is not as deeply involving emotionally or as interesting thematically as it could be. — Jane Smiley

While I do not agree with all of the claims made by experimental philosophers, especially those who seem to think xphi will somehow replace the rest of philosophy, I think xphi projects are interesting and important, I love Josh Knobe's work, and that these projects contribute something new and worthwhile to the philosophical conversation. — L.A. Paul

Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I don't think there's an interesting boundary between philosophy and science. Science is totally beholden to philosophy. There are philosophical assumptions in science and there's no way to get around that. — Sam Harris

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. — David Liss

Excavations at Ai Khanoum on the northern border of modern Afghanistan have produced great quantities of Greek inscriptions and even the remnants of a philosophical treatise originally on papyrus. One of the most interesting is the base of a dedication by one Klearchos, perhaps the known student of Aristotle, that records his bringing to this new Greek city, Alexandria on the Oxus, the traditional maxims from the shrine of Apollo at Delphi concerning the five ages of man:

In childhood, seemliness
In youth, self-control
In middle age, justice
In old age, wise council
In death, painlessness — Robin Lane Fox

Most thoughts are only profiles of thoughts. They must be inverted and synthesized with their antipodes. Thus many philosophical writings become very interesting which would not have been so otherwise. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

That's an interesting philosophical question. When your boner goes away, is that one gone ... forever? — Adam Carolla

No one actually saw it land, which raised the interesting philosophical point: When millions of tons of angry elephant come spinning through the sky, but there is no one to hear it, does it - philosophically speaking - make a noise? — Terry Pratchett