Harry Frankfurt Quotes

What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.

Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.

It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers.

I would not say that I was, these days, a 'student' of philosophy, although in my youth I was quite deeply involved with certain aspects of the British pragmatists.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

Socrates, after all, could be an intensely annoying man, all the time questioning passers-by until they became exasperated.

We have to make philosophy itself an object of philosophical concern.

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature.

And seek for truth in the groves of Academy

The great benefit of philosophy, which is also its great weakness, is that all its steps are taken in the spirit of doubt.

Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.

Knowledge which ... transcends the bounds, the prejudices and pre-judgments of any one society and culture is not an illusion but, on the contrary, a glorious and luminous reality. Just how it was achieved remains subject to debate.

We ascend the hill-tops of philosophy, not to gaze up at the ever-visible heavens, but to embrace in one grand view the human world beneath us.

Avoid independent thinking! How is such independent thinking manifest? A common way is by questioning the council that is provided by God’s visible organization

The specious figments of genius, and the erratic flights of philosophy, may excite our wonder, but they cannot stand the ordeal of scrutiny, or the Lydian touch of experiment.

That's something I learned as a philosophy major: The philosophy ethos is, always question, never rest.

Plato says a multitude can never philosophize and hence can never recognize the seriousness of philosophy or who really philosophizes. Attempting to influence the multitude results in forced prostitution.

The fundamental facts about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priest had said, "Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought." The Greeks said, All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.

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

It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands.

Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.

I would welcome the passing of the idea of philosophy as defined by a method of conceptual analysis. But that is not the passing of philosophy, and it leaves the philosopher with the task of grasping natures or essences (among other things).