Ernest Andre Gellner Quotes

The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.

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

For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher, since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down".

Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed to be true.

Said the master: "Where does your question come from?"

Why' is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it. The alphabet does not go 'A B C D What? When? How?' but it does go 'V W X Why? Z.

There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes.

Philosophy is in fact a quest for wisdom based in sophia; that quest for wisdom has everything to do with a love of wisdom.

I got a bit obsessed with the whole English language and was writing journals and poetry. I've always been intrigued about psychology and philosophy and how people's minds work.

Sociology and anthropology are not disciplines which take easily to situations where people are able to live out their fantasies, not just in the symbolic action of ritual, but in the concrete theater of society at large.

The business of the philosopher is well done if he succeeds in raising genuine doubt.

One can do without solutions. Only the questions matter. We may share them or turn away from them.

For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize... They were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.

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 the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.

In my own time there have been inventions of this sort, transparent windows tubes for diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a building short-hand, which has been carried to such a perfection that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. But the inventing of such things is drudgery for the lowest slaves; philosophy lies deeper. It is not her office to teach men how to use their hands. The object of her lessons is to form the soul.

Being that can be understood is language.

Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written.

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

Questioning is the piety of thought.

Wonder... and not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature.

Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right question...awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.

To philosophize is to doubt.

Therefore, even the lover of myth is a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonder.