Quotes · Skopia

28 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Philosophy✕clear

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

1678

★ 1.0

Philosophy is nothing but discretion.

Richard Milward

1689

★ 1.1

Play · Comedy (play)

For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently.

William Shakespeare

Much Ado About Nothing · 1600

★ 1.2

Novel · Satire

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

Oliver Goldsmith

1761

★ 1.8

Lecture · Philosophical literature

Shall I show you the sinews of a philosopher? "What sinews are those?"-A will undisappointed; evils avoided; powers daily exercised; careful resolution; unerring decisions.

Discourses · 108

★ 1.9

I have tried too in my time to be a philosopher; but, I don't know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D · 1778

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1817

★ 1.9

Treatise · Philosophical literature

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein

1953

★ 1.9

Treatise · Philosophical literature

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

A Treatise of Human Nature · 1739

★ 2.0

Opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, tho' obscure, regions of philosophy.

1757

★ 2.0

Philosophical dialogue · Dialogue · Philosophical literature

Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labor, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.

Plato, Theaetetus · 369 BC

★ 2.1

Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them.

1764

★ 2.1

Autobiography and memoir

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, not even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live accordingly to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 2.1

Courtroom speech · Speech · Philosophical literature

If you were prepared to let me go on those terms, I should reply to you as follows: "I have the greatest fondness and affection for you, fellow Athenians, but I will obey my god rather than you."

Plato, Apology · 399 BC

★ 2.3

Autobiography and memoir

It is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way.

1923

★ 3.5

Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always of philosophers.

John Churton Collins

1900

★ 3.5

Philosophical literature

The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason.

Bertrand Russell

1912

★ 3.5

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Alfred North Whitehead

1928

★ 3.5

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

1625

★ 3.6

Essay · Scientific literature

Wonder... And not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature.

1790

★ 3.6

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