Cornel West Quotes

In praising science, it does not follow that we must adopt the very poor philosophies which scientific men have constructed. In philosophy they have much more to learn than to teach.

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

There are more truths in twenty-four hours of a man's life than in all the philosophies.

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

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

If philosophy is to be a valuable part of life, we have to appreciate it for its own sake, and not just for what it's done for us lately.

The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.

Data is not necessarily information. Information does not necessarily lead to knowledge. And knowledge is not always sufficient to discover truth and breed wisdom.

Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy

A good half of the effort of understanding what the Indian philosophers were after - and their subtleties make most of the great European philosophers look like schoolboys.

A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: 'You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.'

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." In order for you yourself to become the way, the truth, and the life, you must embrace the whole universe and bring harmony to it.

Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.

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

Wisdom, properly so called, is nothing else but this: the perfect knowledge of the truth in all matters whatsoever.

The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality.

I want to discover a truth for myself that is really true. Whether it's a piece of scientific knowledge, or a philosophical truth.

It is by no means certain that we advance our philosophical quest by reading Plato or Aristotle. It may increase our knowledge of history but not of the world.

Ever since men became capable of free speculation, their actions, in innumerable important respects, have depended upon their theories as to the world and human life, as to what is good and what is evil. This is true in the present day as at any former time. To understand an age or a nation, we must understand its philosophy, and to understand its philosophy we must ourselves be in some degree philosophers. There is here a reciprocal causation: the circumstances of men s lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances.

Deep is the well of truth and long does it take to know what has fallen into its depths.

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

My mind was formed by studying philosophy, Plato and that sort of thing.

The only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.

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.