Leszek Kołakowski Quotes

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.

Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.

Criticism does demand a certain kind of authority, but what about the authority of not really being sure what you think? What about the authority, the authenticity that comes from bringing all your intellectual, emotional and spiritual equipment to a piece of art or entertainment whilst still being uncertain and confused?

I see the beard and cloak, but I don't yet see a philosopher. -Video barbam et pallium; philosophum nondum video

I'd ask people to keep in mind the idea that if you really understand something, it's even more important for you to consider the possibility of your wrongness. Even if it takes someone dumber than you to point that out.

If what charms you is nothing but abstract principles, sit down and turn them over quietly in your mind: but never dub yourself a Philosopher.

My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything. They're readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues. But whenever I become absorbed in the beauty of a face, in the excellence of a single feature, I feel I've lost what's really there been seduced by someone else's standard of beauty or by the sitter's own idea of the best in him. That's not usually the best. So each sitting becomes a contest.

There are innumerable instances suggesting that modern intellectuals do not believe themselves, that they don't really believe what they say, that they say certain things only in order to assure themselves that they possess opinions and ideas that are different from those that are entertained by the common herd of men.

Does it not occur to people that I might be artificial by nature?

We can't simply take the way things seem and just work on that, because that would be another kind of mistake thought makes-taking the surface and calling it the reality.

Foucault is the Cagliostro of our time.

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.

When I was 16 I started keeping a diary in which I recorded my disagreements with the famous philosophers. I didn't insist that they were wrong, that I was right and I had to prevail. I just agreed and disagreed with them. I thought there was a high degree of probability that I was right and some other thinkers were wrong. But I wasn't positive about it.

One of the old philosophers says that it is the part of wisdom to sometimes seem a fool; but in our day there are too many ready-made ones to render this a desirable policy.

Clearness marks the sincerity of philosophers.

The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophic study.

The Greeks invented logic but were not fooled by it.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers.

The profound thinker always suspects that he is superficial.

Adhere to the Truth rather than to the personality, and take to heart the Truth rather than the authority of another.

Here you discover that so long as books are kept open, then minds can never be closed.

This idea is more surely understood by interrogation; WHAT DO I KNOW? which I bear as my motto with the emblem of a pair of scales.

During the years 1945-1965 (I am referring to Europe), there was a certain way of thinking correctly, a certain style of politicaldiscourse, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too far from Freud.... These were therequirements that made the strange occupation of writing and speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time acceptable.