T. S. Eliot Quotes

I see philosophy as a fairly abstract activity, as concerned mainly with the analysis of criticism and concepts, and of course most usefully of scientific concepts.

One of the main reasons for the existence of philosophy is not that it enables you to find truth (it can never do that) but that it does provide you a refuge for definitions.

So this is my attempt to give a preliminary - probably far too crude - account of how philosophy by showing can really teach us. The attempts we make to work through problems by reasoning always presuppose starting points, and even the most self-critical philosophers adopt some of those starting points simply by picking them up from the social environments in which they grow up.

Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak.

Descartes, the father of modern philosophy ... would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told; but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain.

Philosophy itself cannot but benefit from our disputes, for if our conceptions prove true, new achievements will be made; if false, their refutation will further confirm the original doctrines.

Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.

In other philosophies, my questions would get answered to some degree, but then I would have a follow-up question and there would be no answer. The logic would dead-end. In Scientology you can find answers for anything you could ever think to ask. These are not pushed off on you as, 'This is the answer, you have to believe in it.' In Scientology you discover for yourself what is true for you.

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.

Analytical philosophy was very interesting. It always struck me as being very interesting and full of tremendous intellectual curiosities. It is wonderful to see the mind at work in such an intense manner, but, for me, it was still too far removed from my own issues.

Philosophers are in the habit of setting themselves before life and experience.

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

Philosophy, the love of Wisdom, is at the very bottom defence against the incomprehensible.

... Philosophy proper is a subject, on the one hand so hopelessly obscure, on the other so astonishingly elementary, that there knowledge hardly counts.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.

Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.

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

The wise skeptic does not teach doubt but how] to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting.

As a philosopher, I have a right to ask for a rational explanation of religious faith.

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind, and therefore independence of all social, political or religious prejudice... It loves one thing only... truth.

All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence.

Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.

We must re-center philosophy within our frame of reference which I think is the way to deal with it.