Bill Bennett Quotes

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.

I had some hesitations about philosophy because, if you worked out a philosophical theory, it was hard to know whether you were going to be able to prove it or whether other theories had just as good a claim on belief.

I'm taking a philosophy class and regretting it with everything in me. I'm taking one college class per semester. Philosophy is studying what you already know and dismantling it. I thought it would be right up my alley. I can't tell you how much it's not me.

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.

That's something I learned as a philosophy major: The philosophy ethos is, always question, never rest.

Philosophy teaches you to think big.

Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

I preferred the weapons of dialectic to all the other teachings of philosophy, and armed with these, I chose the conflicts of disputation rather than the trophies of war.

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.

I took all the philosophy courses I could.

Socrates, after all, could be an intensely annoying man, all the time questioning passers-by until they became exasperated.

I'd love to go back to school for philosophy. I love philosophy, so I'm always reading philosophy books, annoying my girlfriend with that type of stuff.

Philosophy can only be approached with the most concrete comprehension.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value.

Young children are naturally so philosophical. They ask: 'What is real? What is truth?' They have to learn it; they don't automatically know it. To them, it's a game. You can study this for years in college, and yet you probably asked it when you were four or five years old.

About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.

Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.

Initially, I studied philosophy, because it claimed to give you answers to the meaning of existence, but it didn't: It was basically a semantics game.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

My purpose is to explain, not the meaning of words, but the nature of things.

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.

Every single university student should study philosophy. You need to lead the examined life and question your beliefs. If you don't learn critical thinking, then political debate degenerates into a contest of slogans.

I have often said that philosophy is better at questions than at answers – and that's nontrivial. They don't think it's their job to understand how things actually work, whereas I think that should be the job of philosophers.