Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

What I really love about philosophers and psychologists is that they sound smart.

I am Plato's Republic. Mr. Simmons is Marcus. I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Philosophy is easier than politics.

The knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the many.... The light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out the possessors as the victims rather than the illuminators of the multitude.

[Logic and philosophy] were of no use, in the church or the state, in the cloister or the court, in peace or war, at home or abroad or anywhere but in the schools

To be and to think are one and the same for us.

When I was 17, I was at La Coupole brasserie, and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir asked me to join them at their table. They were fascinated that I'd watched their programme on existentialism back home and wanted to understand nothingness and being.

Intellectuals are people who manage the world in their head. They look at life and try to see some kind of truth, and if they cannot find it, they attempt to create it.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

The majority of philosophers are totally humorless. That's part of their trouble.

I don't think it's physically possible for little kids to know what abstract thought is.

We're not accustomed to judging things on philosophical importance.

There's no books out there articulating what the alt-right is. If they're such great philosophers, and they have such good ideas, and they're on the vanguard of intellectualism, where are their books? They don't have any.

What's more valuable - intelligence or consciousness?

I wasn't really that interested in objects. I was interested in ideas.

Philosophy! the lumber of the schools.

A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.

I like people who like Plato.

All real philosophers have been artists in the realm of concepts.

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers

Thinkers are not a welcome addition to most social situations.

One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

To grow a philosopher's beard.

Abstract truth is the eye of reason.

The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.