Philosophizing Quotes & Sayings

I have tried to integrate the spirituality into the training in a way that meets my need not to destroy the beauty of it through abstract philosophizing. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Though it accounts for only 2 percent of the body's mass, it uses up a fifth of all the oxygen we breathe, and it's where a quarter of all our glucose gets burned. The brain is the most energetically expensive piece of equipment in our body, and has been ruthlessly honed by natural selection to be efficient at the tasks for which it evolved. One might say that the whole point of our nervous system, from the sensory organs that feed information to the glob of neurons that interprets it, is to develop a sense of what is happening in the present and what will happen in the future, so that we can respond in the best possible way. Strip away the emotions, the philosophizing, the neuroses, and the dreams, and our brains, in the most reductive sense, are fundamentally prediction and planning machines. — Joshua Foer

According to Bela Szabados, it can be dangerous to ignore philosophers' personalities because philosophizing is a personal interpretation of truth. — Skye Cleary

You work here [on the farm] simply without philosophizing; sometimes the work is hard and crowded with pettiness. But at times you feel a surge of cosmic exaltation, like the clear light of the heavens ... And you, too, seem to be taking root in the soil which you are digging, to be nourished by the rays of the sun, to share life with the tiniest blade of grass, with each flower; living in nature's depths, you seem then to rise and grow into the vast expanse of the universe. — A. D. Gordon

I want to be a great actor someday, and I've decided there's no use philosophizing; the only way is to work at my craft. — Al Pacino

Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying. — Willard Van Orman Quine

Study is to study what cannot be studied. Undertaking means undertaking what cannot be undertaken. Philosophizing is to philosophize about what cannot be philosophized about. Knowing that knowing is unknowable is true perfection. — Zhuangzi

I saw that leaders placed too much emphasis on what some call high level strategy, on intellectualizing and philosophizing, and not enough on implementation. People would agree on a project or initiative, and then nothing would come of it. — Lawrence Bossidy

The act of philosophizing involves the character of the philosopher. — Jacques Maritain

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. — Isaac Newton

In philosophy, when we make use of false principles, we depart the farther from the knowledge of truth and wisdom exactly in proportion to the care with which we cultivate them, and apply ourselves to the deduction of diverse consequences from them, thinking that we are philosophizing well, while we are only departing the farther from the truth; from which it must be inferred that they who have learned the least of all that has been hitherto distinguished by the name of philosophy are the most fitted for the apprehension of truth. — Rene Descartes

Human life is an extension of the principles of nature, and human civilization is a venture extrapolated out of human natures: man and his natural potential are the root of the entire human domain. The great task of all philosophizing is to become competent to interpret and steer the potential developmental forces in human natures and in the human condition, both of which are prodigiously fatalistic. — Kenny Smith

Lou asked point-blank, Can love last? (Rural people get to philosophizing, and will say anything.)
- Oh, darling! No, not that heart-thumping passion. Give that eighteen months. But it's replaced by something even better.
Lou waited.
- Lovers! — Annie Dillard

some Japanese philosophers have been eager to graft the newly introduced discipline of western academic philosophy onto its premodern Japanese antecedents. The conflict with traditional values proposed a whole host of new questions: Can one articulate an original yet comprehensive epistemology that would give western empiricism and logic an appropriate place but subordinate it to a dominant "Asian" basis for thought and values? Can one develop a viable ethics that places agency in a socially interdependent, rather than isolated and discrete, individual? Can one construct an interpretation of artistry based in a mode of responsiveness that is also the ground for knowledge and moral conduct? Can one envision a political theory of the state that allows for personal expression without assuming a radical individualism? Along with these fundamental issues, a great deal of attention was devoted to a still more basic question: What is culture and what affect does it have on philosophizing? — James W. Heisig

Their [philosophers] thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes I go for days without speaking to a soul. I think, "I should make that call", but I put it off. Because there's something pleasurable about not talking. But then I love talking, so it's not that. But sometimes it can be nice. It's not like I sit here philosophizing, because I've no talent for that. It's just this thing about silence that's so wonderful. — Ingmar Bergman

[On philosophizing] Sometimes you have to talk to find out what you think. — Dan Kieran

When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

My parents were always philosophizing about how to bring about change. To me, people who didn't try to make the world a better place were strange. — Carol Moseley Braun

Are we philosophizing?" asked Harshaw. "Or were those song lyrics? — Leigh Bardugo

Philosophizing means, then, to ascend from public dogma to essentially private knowledge. — Leo Strauss

About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Human beings have a physical need to tell themselves when at work: "Let's have done with it now," and it's having constantly to go on thinking in the face of this need when philosophizing that makes this work so strenuous. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I don't waste too much time philosophizing about wealth, I just recommend it to everyone. — Malcolm Forbes

One can delineate the domain of philosophy however one likes, but in its search for truth, philosophy is always concerned with human existence. Authentic philosophizing refuses to remain at the stage of knowledge [ ... ]. Care for human existence and its truth makes philosophy a 'practical science' in the deepest sense, and it also leads philosophy - and this is the crucial point - into the concrete distress of human existence. — Herbert Marcuse

If we ought to philosophize
we ought to philosophize, and if we ought not to philosophize
we ought to philosophize ; in either case, therefore, we ought
to philosophize. For if philosophy exists we ought certainly
to philosophize, because philosophy exists ; and if it does not
exist, even so we ought to examine why it does not exist,
and in examining this we shall be philosophizing, because
examination is what makes philosophy. — Aristotle.

There is a second but not so obvious truth. "I am the Bread of Life," said Jesus. "He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty." Notice the power implicit in the claim. At the heart of every major religion is a leading exponent. As the exposition is studied, something very significant emerges. There comes a bifurcation, or a distinction, between the person and the teaching. Mohammed, to the Koran. Buddha, to the Noble Path. Krishna, to his philosophizing. Zoroaster, to his ethics. Whatever we may make of their claims, one reality is inescapable. They are teachers who point to their teaching or show some particular way. In all of these, there emerges an instruction, a way of living. It is not Zoroaster to whom you turn. It is Zoroaster to whom you listen. It is not Buddha who delivers you; it is his Noble Truths that instruct you. It is not Mohammed who transforms you; it is the beauty of the Koran that woos you. By — Ravi Zacharias

All gentle cant and philosophizing to the contrary notwithstanding, no people in this world ever did achieve their freedom by goody-goody talk and moral suasion: it being immutable law that all revolutions that will succeed, must begin in blood. — Mark Twain

We come finally, however, to the relation of the ideal theory to real world, or "real" probability. If he is consistent a man of the mathematical school washes his hands of applications. To someone who wants them he would say that the ideal system runs parallel to the usual theory: "If this is what you want, try it: it is not my business to justify application of the system; that can only be done by philosophizing; I am a mathematician". In practice he is apt to say: "try this; if it works that will justify it". — John Edensor Littlewood

When I was twelve, I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate in education and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said that I either wanted to be a philosopher or a clown, and I understood then, I think, that much depended on whether or not I found the world worth philosophizing about, and what the price of seriousness might be. — Judith Butler

The head will go round and round thinking, brooding, philosophizing; it knows only words, logic, argument. But it is very infertile; you cannot get anything out of the head as far as truth is concerned, because truth needs no logic, no argument, no philosophical research. — Osho

But facts obscure the truth, which is that writing prose doesn't make you a prose writer any more than philosophizing makes you a philosopher or fooling around makes you a fool. — Mark Forsyth

I have never claimed to live by any set of principles," Warner says to me. "I've never claimed to be right, or good, or even justified in my actions. I have been forced to do terrible things in my life, love, and I am seeking neither your forgiveness nor your approval. Because I do not have the luxury of philosophizing over scruples when I'm forced to act on basic instinct every day. — Tahereh Mafi

All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The glorious truth is that the Bible does not teach that all men are separated and cut off from God because of sin. It is a mythical conclusion, arrived at by men philosophizing in accordance with the fallen mind; men who, in their scramble for proof texts, read their preconceived ideas into passages that are irrelevant to their argument. What the Bible actually teaches is that it was us who separated ourselves from God. The guilt, shame and fear that accompanied sin caused us to run and hide, but God was right where He'd always been. Remember, man's mind had become corrupted by the knowledge of good and evil, rendering him incapable of perceiving God rightly. Over the years, people born with this same inability began viewing their loving Father as someone to be terrified of. — Jeff Turner

Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Nothing is more evident, I venture to think, as a result of two or three thousand years of social philosophizing, than that society must live and thrive by way of the native impulses of individual human beings. — William Ernest Hocking

There's simply no philosophizing without a love of wisdom, absolutely. — Cornel West

Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty: for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated; even the Stoics regarded urbanity as a virtue. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I don't know to what author you may be alluding, but believe me I feel what I think; and I seem to be philosophizing only for those who do not think what they feel, because they blind themselves with their own sentiment. I know that for many people this self-blinding seems much more "human"; but the contrary is really true. — Luigi Pirandello

The process of philosophizing, to my mind, consists mainly in passing from those obvious, vague, ambiguous things, that we feel quite sure of, to something precise, clear, definite, which by reflection and analysis we find is involved in the vague thing that we start from, and is, so to speak, the real truth of which that vague thing is a sort of shadow. — Bertrand Russell

A vital part of philosophizing is learning to trust one's own intuitivist intelligence, getting one's center of gravity back between one's feet. In our culture-so outer-directed, "objective" or extraverted-this is already heresy. This is self-mastering thinking, centered in what has been well-tested as certainties: autarkia or self-rule. — Kenny Smith

What's most troubling about this witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence is the increasing realization that it actually thinks it's saying something of significance. — Kenneth Turan

Some of our philosophizing divines have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintained that by their force mankind has been able to find out God. — John Dryden

You're a terrorist, notta rebel," Morganith added darkly, "and we're done philosophizing. Give us the lockbox and we'll kill you."
Natasha looked at Morganith uncertainly. "Don't you mean 'or' you'll kill us?"
"No, I mean 'and. — Ash Gray

To live without philosophizing is in truth the same as keeping the eyes closed without attempting to open them. — Rene Descartes

The taxi driver felt that it was a good observation, and said he was planning to build for the future, too: he had some money on the horses, and if he won, he would buy his own taxicab, and really do well.
I felt very sorry. I told him that betting on the horses was a bad idea, but he insisted it was the only way he could do it. He had such good intentions, but his method was going to be luck.
I wasn't going to go on philosophizing, so he took me to a place where there was a steel band playing some great calypso music, and I had an enjoyable afternoon. — Richard Feynman

I'm no romantic, surfing, California boy. I like reading, writing, philosophizing. Scheming. I've been doing some exploration of the inner space. — Henry Hopper

As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life. — Desiderius Erasmus

Philosophizing is a process of making sense out of experience ... — Susanne Katherina Langer

I wanted to be her north star. I wanted to be her map. I wanted to drink coffee with her in the cafes in the morning and do things, as you do, as she did, instead of just philosophizing about them and deconstructing their endless Russian-doll layers of meaning. I was alone before I met her. I wanted to disappear with her, and fold her into my life. I wanted to be her compass. I wanted to be her last speaker, her interpreter, her language. I wanted to be her translator, Zed, but none of the languages we knew were the same. — Emily St. John Mandel

For through wondering human beings now and in the beginning have been led to philosophizing. — Aristotle.

How does it happen that, on the one hand, we all share not just a sense that there is such a thing as justice, but a passion for it, a deep longing that things should be put to rights, a sense of out-of-jointness that goes on nagging and gnawing and sometimes screaming at us - and yet, on the other hand, after millennia of human struggle and searching and love and longing and hatred and hope and fussing and philosophizing, we still can't seem to get much closer to it than people did in the most ancient societies we can discover? — N. T. Wright

Philosophy has become the shadow of itself over the years. Nine parts history and one part reflection on history. It has been ages since anything original came forth in the field. All the good thinking has already been done. Nowadays, philosophers are mostly institutionalized academics - like me - focused more on the politics of tenure than on philosophizing. — Gudjon Bergmann