Isaac Newton Quotes

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

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

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.

To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet.

The examined life is no picnic.

My reading of philosophy and history is desultory; I know so much and yet so little.

Do I appear to you to have come to a wrong decision, if I devote that time to philosophy, which I otherwise should have spent at the loom?

I have opinions of my own—strong opinions—but I don’t always agree with them.

In general, I agree with Socrates that what democracies badly need is the examined life, and we need to think critically about ourselves.

You need to weigh things up properly in life and ask yourself if it is your call to make, or one to satisfy others.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?

Men who are lovers of wisdom [i.e., philosophers] must be inquirers into many things.

Without ego I don't know how identity works, I don't know... I need to sit down and re-read some philosophy or something.

An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.

What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who soughtto cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.

Every philosophical review ought to be a philosophy of reviews at the same time.

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns around and examines itself.

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.

It is wisdom that is seeking for wisdom.

Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates - but pages might be filled up, as vainly as before, with the sad usage of all sorts of sages, who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore! The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.

Socrates' way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge.

But in philosophy, sometimes the baby ought to go out with the bath water.

The moment philosophy supposes it can find a final and comprehensive solution, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes either apologetics or propaganda.

How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky?