Richard Rorty Quotes

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.

Philosophers are very severe towards other philosophers because they expect too much.

The word 'right' should be excluded from political language, as the word 'cause' from the language of philosophy.

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?

Isn't it in the nature of intellectuals to be culture critics?

The major public goals in my life are intellectual goals. There are various philosophical things that I want to work on and work out.

I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.

I see philosophy as a fairly abstract activity, as concerned mainly with the analysis of criticism and concepts, and of course most usefully of scientific concepts.

One must be oneself very little of a philosopher not to feel that the finest privilege of our reason consists in not believing in anything by the impulsion of a blind and mechanical instinct, and that it is to dishonour reason to put it in bonds as the Chaldeans did. Man is born to think for himself.

Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.

Socrates gave no diplomas or degrees, and would have subjected any disciple who demanded one to a disconcerting catechism on the nature of true knowledge.

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

There is no knowledge without theory.

We thought philosophy ought to be patient and unravel people's mental blocks. Trouble with doing that is, once you've unravelled them, their heads fall off.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher.

In the general tendency toward specialization, philosophy too has established itself as a specialized discipline, one purified of all specific content. In so doing, philosophy has denied its own constitutive concept: the intellectual freedom that does not obey the dictates of specialized knowledge.

Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening.

Philosophy may describe unreasoning, as it may describe force; it cannot hope to refute them.

The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.

Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong.

Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created

The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.

Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking; hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots that it unravels.