Philosophically Quotes & Sayings

The more philosophically coherent something is, the more lunatic it is going to be. — Charles Cosimano

If one could be right every hand, none of us would be here,' he said philosophically. — Ian Fleming

Iran is not a make-believe country. It is a real country populated by some 75 million people - real people; including, I daresay, a majority who are philosophically and by education inclined toward the modern, secular world, and particularly American values. — Bob Barr

It's very interesting to blur the line between eating human beings and eating animals, because I do think people should think more about what they put in their bodies, whether it is nutritionally or philosophically. — Bryan Fuller

Open theists affirm the same openness of the future that religious believers assume when they pray and almost all humans assume when they act. The open future is intuitive; but can it be rigorously defended? God in an Open Universe shows that it can. Open theism has always been an attractive view of God; now it becomes a philosophically rigorous one as well. — Philip Clayton

In my opinion it is a grand book ... Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement ... What we need therefore, in my opinion, is not a change in our economic programmes, which would only lead in practice to disillusion with the results of your philosophy; but perhaps even the contrary, namely, an enlargement of them. Your greatest danger is the probable practical failure of the application of your philosophy in the United States. — John Maynard Keynes

I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime, but I prefer not to take tea with him. — Albert Einstein

The continually moving mind is philosophically symbolized by the avatar Fudo Myo-o, the Wisdom King, often depicted holding a sword in one hand for cutting through ignorance, and a rope in the other for tying up passions. — Yagyu Munenori

In the Scriptures there is practically no effort made to define faith. Outside of a brief fourteen-word definition in Hebrews 11:1, I know of no Biblical definition, and even there faith is defined functionally, not philosophically; that is, it is a statement of what faith is in operation, not what it is in essence. It assumes the presence of faith and shows what it results in, rather than what it is. We will be wise to go just that far and attempt to go no further. — A.W. Tozer

If you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous when you think of it, theoretically or philosophically. It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today. — Willem De Kooning

The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative, taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows. — John Stuart Mill

Even scientific knowledge, if there is anything to it, is not a random observation of random objects; for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action. — Karl Jaspers

The power of equations lies in the philosophically difficult correspondence between mathematics, a collective creation of human minds, and an external physical reality. Equations model deep patterns in the outside world. By learning to value equations, and to read the stories they tell, we can uncover vital features of the world around us ... — Ian Stewart

Such a principled disregard of ad hominem evidence is a characteristically modern prejudice of professional philosophers. For most Greek and Roman thinkers from Plato to Augustine, theorizing was but one mode of living life philosophically. To Socrates and the countless classical philosophers who tried to follow in his footsteps, the primary point was not to ratify a certain set of propositions (even when the ability to define terms and analyze arguments was a constitutive component of a school's teaching), but rather to explore 'the kind of person, the sort of self' that one could elaborate as a result of taking the quest for wisdom seriously. — James Miller

Intelligent design is a modest position theologically and philosophically. It attributes the complexity and diversity of life to intelligence, but does not identify that intelligence with the God of any religious faith or philosophical system. — William A. Dembski

The fact is, the great intellectuals of the western religious tradition from Augustine to Aquinas and Peter Abelard became philosophically dominant. The intellectual tradition was preserved. The great intellectuals of the Islamic tradition like Averroes and Avicenna became heretics whose influence disappeared under the weight of rote preaching and practice. Islam as a result has a moral code, a legalistic system of right and wrong, but no evolved ethical tradition. — R. Joseph Hoffmann

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the 'Not Me,' that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, 'Nature.' — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they signify merely men's ignorance of the real an immediate cause. — Adam Clarke

Men are suppressing woman politically, philosophically, socially, through denying them education, equal rights, equal employment, and just by setting up a description of the world in which a woman views herself as a vessel, as someone who's only there to have children, as someone who can't succeed, even spiritually. — Frederick Lenz

Like Karl Kraus, [Wittgenstein] was seldom pleased by what he saw of the institutions of men, and the idiom of the passerby mostly offended his ear particularly when they happened to speak philosophically; and like Karl Kraus, he suspected that the institutions could not but be corrupt if the idiom of the race was confused, presumptuous, and vacuous, a fabric of nonsense, untruth, deception, and self-deception. — Thomas Szasz

We all paint on a face to show the world," Nicholas replies philosophically. "For some of us, that's quite literal. — L. H. Cosway

Philosophically, what I have learned is to thy own self be true. That is the biggest lesson of all. Relax; music is fun. To many people take it to seriously because of the money involved. — Greg Lake

The foregoing considerations lead us to the very important conclusion, that matter is essentially force, and nothing but force; that matter, as popularly understood, does not exist, and is, in fact, philosophically inconceivable. — Alfred Russel Wallace

Philosophically speaking, from the Buddhist point of view, both human beings and animals possess what in Tibetan is called shepa, which can be roughly translated as "consciousness," albeit to different degrees of complexity. — Dalai Lama XIV

I see evil when I look in my shaving mirror. It is, philosophically, present everywhere in the universe in order, apparently, to highlight the existence of good. I think there is more to this theory, but I tend to burst out laughing at this point. — Terry Pratchett

A non-doer is very often a critic-that is, someone who sits back and watches doers, and then waxes philosophically about how the doers are doing. It's easy to be a critic, but being a doer requires effort, risk, and change. — Wayne W. Dyer

It is true that many scientists are not philosophically minded and have hitherto shown much skill and ingenuity but little wisdom. — Max Born

Whether philosophically you believe in a public subsidization of an arena or a stadium, that's the reality. We can't have professional basketball in this community by the end of our lease in 2010 without subsidization. — Wally Walker

It is philosophically impossible to be an atheist, since to be an atheist you must have infinite knowledge in order to know absolutely that there is no God. But to have infinite knowledge, you would have to be God yourself. It's hard to be God yourself and an atheist at the same time! — Ron Carlson

To take philosophy seriously is to engage with it philosophically. — Jay L. Garfield

How dominating is appetite, how enveloping immediate experience! Even the philosophically minded among us capitulate, ultimately, to the narrowest sense of personal need. Political time moves at a snail's pace because it is only with nearly insurmountable difficulty that moral discomfort takes root in the best of people, forcing an imperative out of a complaint; so viscerally repugnant is it for a critical mass to find the prevailing system unbearable, much less prepare to take up arms against it. — Vivian Gornick

Hear that, Eustace? He wishes we were staying a good long time."
"I expect it will seem a good long time," said Eustace, philosophically. — P.G. Wodehouse

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew. — Albert Einstein

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure. — Aldous Huxley

A genuinely free and educated man should be able to tune himself, as one tunes a musical instrument, absolutely arbitrarily, at his convenience at any time and to any degree, philosophically or philologically, critically or poetically, historically or rhetorically, in ancient or modern form. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I've never had a five-year plan or a three-year plan, or whatever, ... We had an idea philosophically of what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. — Kirk Ferentz

The Christian message does not begin with "accept Christ as your Savior"; it begins with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". The Bible teaches that God is the sole source of the entire created order. No other gods compare with Him; no natural forces exist on their own; nothing receives its nature or existence from another source. Thus, His Word, or laws, or creation ordinances give the world its order and structure. God's creative world is the source of the laws of physical nature (natural sciences), human nature (ethics, politics, economics, aesthetics) and even logic. That's why Psalm 119:91 says, "all things are your servants". There is no philosophically or spiritually neutral subject matter. — Nancy Pearcey

If the supernatural in a conventional sense is no longer possible, what remains after the "death of God" is an occulted, hidden world. Philosophically speaking, the enigma we face is how to confront this world, without immediately presuming that it is identical to the world-for-us (the world of science and religion), and without simply disparaging it as an irretrievable and inaccessible world-in-itself. — Eugene Thacker

Why did Marx and Lenin succeed were Hong and Mahdi failed? Not because socialist humanism was philosophically more sophisticated than Islamic and Christan theology, but rather because Marx and Lenin devoted more attention to understanding the technological and economic realities of their time than to perusing ancient texts and prophetic dreams — Yuval Noah Harari

'Star Trek' is science fiction. 'Star Wars' is science fantasy. Based on the episodes I worked on, I think with 'Star Wars: Clone Wars,' we're starting to see a merging, though. It does deal, philosophically, with some of the issues of the time, which is always something 'Star Trek' was known for. — George Takei

We have this extraordinary conceit in the West that while we've been hard at work in the creation of technological wizardry and innovation, somehow the other cultures of the world have been intellectually idle. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nor is this difference due to some sort of inherent Western superiority. We now know to be true biologically what we've always dreamed to be true philosophically, and that is that we are all brothers and sisters. We are all, by definition, cut from the same genetic cloth. That means every single human society and culture, by definition, shares the same raw mental activity, the same intellectual capacity. And whether that raw genius is placed in service of technological wizardry or unraveling the complex thread of memory inherent in a myth is simply a matter of choice and cultural orientation. — Wade Davis

I knew Donald Fagan at Bard. He was wildly gifted. He gave me a phone number which I never used and I guess I lost! Philosophically it's an interesting song; I mean I think his 'number' is a cipher for the self. — Rikki Ducornet

Even virtue itself, all perfect as it is, requires to be inspirited by passion; for duties are but coldly performed which are but philosophically fulfilled. — Anna Brownell Jameson

(W)hat is remarkable about the Greeks
even pre-philosophically
is that despite the salience of religious rituals in their lives, when it came to the question of what it is that makes an individual human life worth living they didn't look to the immortals but rather approached the question in mortal terms. Their approaching the question of human mattering in human terms is the singularity that creates the conditions for philosophy in ancient Greece, most especially as these conditions were realized in the city-state of Athens. — Rebecca Goldstein

When I wrote 'Green, Green,' it was like a really a statement of where I was at philosophically in my life. — Barry McGuire

More philosophically-minded critics regarded Einstein's argument for relativity as little more than a logical bait-and-switch ploy: [T]he supposition of most expounders of the Special Theory, that Einstein has proved the relativity of simultaneity in general - or that his 'simultaneity' is something more than a logical artefact - must manifestly be given up. — Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

He did not feel as if he were inside a Pillar of Darkness in the middle of Yorkshire; he felt more as if the rest of the world had fallen away and he and Strange were left alone upon a solitary island or promontory. The idea distressed him a great deal less than one might have supposed. He had never much cared for the world and he bore its loss philosophically. — Susanna Clarke

Most influential of all is the philosopher Stanley Cavell, and a younger generation of philosophers who have attempted to follow his pioneering work in thinking about literature philosophically. — Philip Kitcher

I try to figure out - intellectually, philosophically, psychologically - what the experience of beauty is. — Denis Dutton

The world is philosophically booby-trapped; touch an interesting subject, and it just might blow up in your face. Some say it's better not to touch. — Michael Leunig

Philosophically literate anthropomorphism is exactly what one would expect of any worldview which affirms that human beings are made in the image of God.

(from The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers) — Eleanore Stump

It seemed to us philosophically self-evident that suicide was every free person's right: a logical act when faced with illness or senility; a heroic one when faced with torture or the avoidable deaths of others; a glamourous one in the fury of dissappointed love (see: Great Literature). — Julian Barnes

Benno blushed violently. "I am not a murderer!" he protested. "No one is, until he commits his first crime," William said philosophically. — Umberto Eco

Any fool can be happy. What I'm interested in is satisfaction. There's got to be more to life than just being happy. You've got to be fulfilled. You've got to be satisfied; philosophically satisfied is what I mean. — Charlie Trotter

I'm proud of my relationship with 'Star Trek'! 'Star Trek' is a show that I am philosophically compatible with. — George Takei

Philosophically, Romanticism is a crusade to glorify man's existence; psychologically, it is experienced simply as the desire to make life interesting. — Ayn Rand

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

I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.' — Pete Townshend

Well, in one sense, I can't know what it is that I don't know. That's philosophically self-evident. — Julian Barnes

We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically. — Robert Gottlieb

It was all part of the Eastern system of control and appropriation, Frankie reflected philosophically. The old controlled the young, the educated the uneducated, and as for the rich, well the rich had no doubt at all that they actually owned the poor. — Ashok Ferrey

The sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: 'This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is (21). — Annie Dillard

I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism ... The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide. — Saul Alinsky

As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it. — Tom Stoppard

Men will argue more philosophically about the human heart; but women will read the heart of man better than they. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I speculate that this is the best of all possible worlds, for philosophy is the best of humanity, and this world is the best philosophically. — Kedar Joshi

To speak technically photography is the art of writing with light. But if I want to think about it more philosophically, I can say that photography is the art of writing with time. When you capture an image you capture not only a piece of space, you also capture a piece of time. So you have this piece of specific time in your square or rectangle. In that sense I find that photography has more to do with time than with light. — Gerardo Suter

Alec looked at her and shook his head. "How do you manage never to get mud on your clothes?"
Isabelle shrugged philosophically. "I'm pure at heart. It repels the dirt. — Cassandra Clare

The federal government is a machine designed to increase its control over the lives of average Americans. It is constantly probing here, pushing there, and generally increasing its control. Without a philosophically sound, constitutionally based political party opposing that process, it is going to continue to do so with impunity. — Ed Crane

I tell you, I've seen things," Panther growled philosophically, "squirrels chasing their tails like dogs, dogs climbing trees like squirrels, but I've never seen a house behave like a flower, demanding to be watered. — Ksenia Anske

Cats can be a very affectionate type of animal, but it's an affection you have to win. Pretty much the way you earn the affection of your friends and your lovers and your wives and your girlfriends and anybody else that's meaningful in your life,' says Des philosophically. 'There's a period of time where you don't know your positioning, and you work for it. And then all of a sudden, the relationship is established and it's yours, it belongs to you, it's something tangible. You can feel it, you can touch it. — Denise Flaim

I remembered his expression remained not exactly bored so much as philosophically separate — Joe Dunthorne

Sophie found philosophy doubly exciting because she was able to follow all the ideas by using her own common sense - without having to remember everything she had learned at school. She decided that philosophy was not something you can learn; but perhaps you can learn to think philosophically. — Jostein Gaarder

I would venture to say none of us understand the road we walk," he said, philosophically. "You may be a bit better prepared, but we are all traveling blindly into a future that is murky to us. Death or delight may be around the next bend, we never know. Nor can we. We can merely prepare ourselves and walk bravely forward." I — Terry Mancour

Philosophically, I believe that libertarianism - and the wider creed of sound individualism of which libertarianism is a part - must rest on absolutism and deny relativism. — Murray Rothbard

Philosophically speaking, shadows of people are friendlier than people themselves because they come together very easily! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Exercise, not philosophically and with religious gravity undertaken, but with the wild and romping activities of a spirited girl who runs up and down as if her veins were full of wine. — Lola Montez

Few fallacies are more dangerous or easier to fall into than that by which, having read a given book, we assume that we will continue to know its contents permanently, or having mastered a discipline in the past, we assume that we control it in the present. Philosophically speaking, "to learn" is a verb with not legitimate tense. — Robert Grudin

I think there's this essential human desire to have a unified field theory. Everyone is like, 'I want to unlock the single secret to 'Lost.' There isn't any one secret. There is not a unified field theory for 'Lost,' nor do we think there should be, because philosophically, we don't buy into that as a conceit. — Carlton Cuse

I didn't feel like gymnastics were part of The Cars. I certainly philosophically didn't want to prod the audience to react to anything. To me, it was more like negative theater. We didn't really talk to the audience. I didn't see that being a part of this band. — Ric Ocasek

R. V. L. Hartley, the inventor of the Hartley oscillator, was thinking philosophically about the transmission of information at about this time, and he summarized his reflections in a paper, "Transmission of Information," which he published in 1928. — John Robinson Pierce

When we are relaxed and reasonable content, we are naturally wise. We accept that life is unpredictable, unreliable. We say jokingly or philosophically, "Nothing is sure except death and taxes," or "God willing and the creek don't rise," reminding each other that, notwithstanding the level of planning, we are continually dealing with being surprised. We get startled. We recover. We are disappointed. We adjust. Mostly-with Wisdom intact-we manage. — Sylvia Boorstein

Politically, the goal of today's dominant trend
is statism.
Philosophically, the goal is the
obliteration of reason;
psychologically, it is the
erosion of ambition. — Ayn Rand

The discrepancy is that the ethical self should be found immanently in the despair, that the individual won himself by persisting in the despair. True, he has used something within the category of freedom, choosing himself, which seem to remove the difficulty, one that presumably has not struck many, since philosophically doubting everything and then finding the true beginning goes one, two, three. But that does not help. In despairing, I use myself to despair, and therefore I can indeed despair of everything by myself. But if I do this, I cannot come back by myself. It is in this moment of decision that the individual needs divine assistance, whereas it is quite correct that in order to be at this point one must first have understood the existence-relation between the aesthetic and the ethical; that is to say, by being there in passion and inwardness, one surely becomes aware of the religious - and of the leap. — Soren Kierkegaard

Dwight Langley, the painter, is the pure exponent of the evil the play is attacking; he is, in effect, the spokesman for Platonism, who explicitly preaches that beauty is unreachable in this world and perfection unattainable. Since he insists that ideals are impossible on earth, he cannot, logically enough, believe in the reality of any ideal, even when it actually confronts him. Thus, although he knows every facet of Kay Gonda's face, he (alone among the characters) does not recognize her when she appears in his life. This philosophically induced blindness, which motivates his betrayal of her, is a particularly brilliant concretization of the play's theme, and makes a dramatic Act I curtain. — Ayn Rand

I - obviously, I'm not a big fan of President Obama. I think he's been one of our weakest presidents. I just fundamentally disagree with him philosophically. — Dick Cheney

It is impossible to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and be a Republican. It's philosophically absolutely opposed - if they could only think about what they were saying for a minute. That's when you get caught up in the webs of what people call themselves and how they behave. — Neil Peart

One of the things anxiety educates you in is how deeply physical thought can be, how concrete. In anxiety, there is no time to luxuriate in abstractions. It's just you and your mind, which has fists and is using them. It may be dualistic and logically untenable to posit the situation as You v. Head; it may not make sense philosophically. But in the throes of anxiety? In the cognitive shit? There's really no other way to think about what's going on. — Daniel Smith

We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything so as you do not claim it a better way. Religiously, you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If a spiritual idea is eastern, it is granted critical immunity; if western, it is thoroughly criticized. Thus, a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century. A mood can be a dangerous state of mind, because it can crush reason under the weight of feeling. But that is precisely what I believe postmodernism best represents - a mood. — Ravi Zacharias

Sometimes I want to convey something complex philosophically, and sometimes I just want to portray myself in a situation that I think other people have been in many times, but it hasn't been written about much. — Harvey Pekar

Philosophy by showing - including philosophy in literature - does truly valuable work in leading us to new perspectives from which our arguments can then begin. It does so by introducing new synthetic complexes, which we then reflect on from various points of view. When the complexes survive and grow, that initial showing has been philosophically decisive. — Philip Kitcher

I am aware that when we see something, we are getting only a measure of information, a sense, an inkling of what is really there to see. I don't know the details or the terminology but I do know that the optic nerve is not telling the full truth. We're seeing only intimations. The rest is our invention, our way of constructing what is actual, if there is any such thing, philosophically, that we can call actual. — Don DeLillo

What a delight it is to think that you are quietly & philosophically at work in the pursuit of science ... rather than fighting amongst the crowd of black passions & motives that seem now a days to urge men every where into action. What incredible scenes every where, what unworthy motives ruled for the moment, under high sounding phrases and at the last what disgusting revolutions. — Michael Faraday

People would continue to adopt a particular conception of the divine because it worked for them, not because it was scientifically or philosophically sound. — Karen Armstrong

Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me ... I should like to find a genuine loophole. — Arthur Eddington

Self discovery doesn't not seek to bring you answers about your personal life or philosophically comfort you about life and death. What it does is bring you into reality as perception itself. — Frederick Lenz

Whatever happens, my audience mustn't know whether I am spoofing or being serious; and likewise I mustn't know either. I am in a constant interrogation; when does the deep and philosophically valid Dali begin, and where does the looney and preposterous Dali end? — Salvador Dali

The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith. — Galileo Galilei

In truth, philosophy is the mode of thought shaped by the most radical form of prejudice: the passion of being-in-the-world. With the sole exception of specialists in the field, virtually everyone senses that anything which offers less than this passion play remains philosophically trivial. Cultural anthropologists suggest the appealing term 'deep play' for the comprehensively absorbing preoccupations of human beings. From the perspective of a theory of the practising life we would add: the deep plays are those which are moved by the heights. — Peter Sloterdijk

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs). — J.R.R. Tolkien