Philip Kitcher Quotes

The philosopher says think your way out. The sensualist says play your way out but none of it works.

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.

I read whenever possible, and I buy books all the time, sometimes online, but mostly from bookshops. I love literature. If you want to understand art, it's important to understand what is also happening in literature, in music, in science, in architecture.

Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.

All of us, whether we are ignorant of philosophy or professors of philosophy, find it easier to follow dogma than to think.

It was through the feeling of wonder that men now and at first began to philosophize.

he who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors

I think musicians are always supportive of each other because they want the groove to keep going on. They just basically want to play music.

Through books you will meet poets and novelists whose creations will fire your imagination. You will meet the great thinkers who will share with you their philosophies, their concepts of the world, of humanity and of creation. You will learn about events that have shaped our history, of deeds both noble and ignoble. All of this knowledge is yours for the taking… Your library is a storehouse for mind and spirit. Use it well.

This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin.

There’s a real question as to what beauty is and why it’s important to us. Many pseudo-philosophers try to answer these questions and tell us they’re not really answerable. I draw on art and literature, and music in particular, because music is a wonderful example of something that’s in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.

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.

An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.

I think that it's important for people to read philosophy and literature is not because I think everyone should be a well-rounded human being, but because it will help you think better about what you are doing.

I studied art history and philosophy and took economics and political science classes. I just took whatever I wanted and I didn't worry about grades and I read and learned a lot, and I didn't have much of a social life, so it was deeply absorbing.

The point of philosophy, as I see it, is to change thinking, and thereby to change the conversation.

Most influential of all is the philosopher Stanley Cavell, and a younger generation of philosophers who have attempted to follow his pioneering work in thinking about literature philosophically.

The thing that hasn't changed, and I don't think will ever change, is that the operative word in music is "play." You have to have a playfulness about it. As the world shifts, it's starting to understand more and more that to have a playfulness about any and everything is actually the way of having a better life, or being more creative, or being more productive.

I think that fiction has a part to play in urging us, as a species, toward compassion.

I read, I think, I play, I work. And all that thinkingand playing and reading comes into my art. I couldn't really sithere and delineate for you what the thought process is. I can perhapssay that literature, psychoanalysis and theater have been very valuableexperiences that have informed and nourished me along the way.

I kept thinking there's bound to be something else? I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it.

I think Clapton is brilliant. He's the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar.

All the arts are brothers; each one is a light to the others.

Music is the most important thing. I'm thinking of my future. There has to be something new, and I want to be part of it. I want to lead an orchestra with excellent musicians. I want to play music which draws pictures of the world and its space