Michel Onfray Quotes

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

Italy is full of historical buildings. And Europe holds a great history of philosophy from Greece until today. I read all those books and see these buildings, and I think of where I stand when I design my architecture.

The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.

The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought.

I learned much more about acting from philosophy courses, psychology courses, history and anthropology than I ever learned in acting class.

Had I not been a philosopher in deeds, I would have devoted myself to the study of words

Cynicism was a school in Greece - the Cynics. Diogenes is a famous Cynic. There was a strong belief in nihilism and narcissism. Those are old schools too.

So then there was the Greek, Socrates, he was great... He invented questioning. Before Socrates, no questioning. Everyone sort of went, ''Yeah, I suppose so.

The whole life of a philosopher is the meditation of his death.

But Aristotle's philosophy was the intellect's Declaration of Independence.

It is easy to build a philosophy - it doesn't have to run

I am the East. I have philosophies, I have religions, who would exchange them for airplanes?

Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.

I have no perfect panacea for human ills. And even if I had I would not attempt to present a system of philosophy between the soup and fish.

Philosophy still moves too much straight ahead, and is not yet cyclical enough.

I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.

Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest.

Philosophy is the rational expression of genius.

Where politics is concerned, I think poets have to be pragmatists, philosophical pragmatists.

Cicero called Aristotle a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to speak, it would be in language like theirs.

Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men.

There is no such thing as 'Gandhism', and I do not want to leave any sect after me.

Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat.