P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

I bought some books in order to learn the first principles of philosophy.

I discovered philosophy in my youth when I read 'wildly,' and thus I was exposed to the world of ideas.

If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don't give me Ayn Rand.

It is right that we be concerned with the scientific probity of metaphysics.

Let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is of greater weight, and their judgment more to be relied on, because they are believed to have paid attention, not to matters of fiction, but to the investigation of the truth.

Philosophy is an odd thing. When we use the word in everyday speech, you know, you sometimes hear it hilariously.

You can't do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

I was interested in philosophy before I knew I was. That's to say, when I was at school, I used to argue with my friends about issues that turned out to be philosophical ones of some kind.

I took all the philosophy courses I could.

Philosophy changes day by day.

Well, I don't know if I can comment on Kant or Hegel because I'm no real philosopher in the sense of knowing what these people have said in any detail so let me not comment on that too much.

I don't think there's an interesting boundary between philosophy and science. Science is totally beholden to philosophy. There are philosophical assumptions in science and there's no way to get around that.

When it comes to the real operational issues that govern our understanding of physical reality, ontological definitions of classical philosophers are, in my opinion, sterile.

To me, what philosophy does best is reflect on knowledge that's generated in other areas.

Truth as such is not a particularly important concept in naturalistic philosophy.

Metaphysics is a science.

First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

We will never fully explain the world by appealing to something outside it that must simply be accepted on faith, be it an unexplained God or an unexplained set of mathematical laws.

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

There are areas of philosophy that are important, but I think of them as being subsumed by other fields. In the case of descriptive philosophy, you have literature or logic, which, in my view, is really mathematics.

Philosophy is altogether less pure now. It's been impurified by science and social science and history.

Philosophy teaches you to think big.