Philosophical Thinking Quotes

This freedom of communication is indispensable for the development and extension of scientific knowledge, a consideration of much practical import. In the first instance it must be guaranteed by law. But laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man may present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population. Such an ideal of external liberty can never be fully attained but must be sought unremittingly if scientific thought, and philosophical and creative thinking in general, are to be advanced as far as possible.

I didn't trust adults because I thought they were all kind of corrupted. I thought children were pure and innocent, and that was inherently better. I guess I was a philosophical child.

Shall our sons become the disciples of Voltaire, and the dragoons of Marat, or our daughters the concubines of the Illuminati?

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

So, as one sees, I by no means deprive my world of stubborn reality, if I merely call it a world of ideas.

Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure.

I have a morality. I don't know if it's the best morality. And I do like thinking. If people perceive that as a moral intellectualism, that's fine. That's up to them to decide.

Other kids would be playing with their Action Man, and I was questioning life and society.

Dad said I would always be "high minded and low waged" from reading too much Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe he was right.

We should remember that there was once a discipline called natural philosophy. Unfortunately, this discipline seems not to exist today. It has been renamed science, but science of today is in danger of losing much of the natural philosophy aspect.

Being a philosopher is to think, seek wisdom, and have principles that guide and influence what you do. It's to give meaning to things, find your way in the world, believe that in the end, in every instance, good will overcome evil, even if there's a bit of suffering along the way.

Each day reason penetrates further into France, into the shops of merchants as well as the mansions of lords. We must cultivate the fruits of this reason, especially since it is impossible to check its advance. One cannot govern France, after it has been enlightened by Pascal, Nicole, Arnauld, Bossuiet, Descartes, Gassendi, Bayle, Fontenelle, and the others, as it as been governed in the times of Garasse and Menot.

If you don't generalize you don't philosophize.

Lately I've been working to convince myself that everything is a computation.

It has often been said, and certainly not without justification, that the man of science is a poor philosopher.

Socrates, who was a perfect model in all great qualities, ... hit on a body and face so ugly and so incongruous with the beauty of his soul, he who was so madly in love with beauty.

Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

The philosopher never counted he was never invited to play the role of d’ai—propagandist for reform ideas. That role went to the fuqaha, the religious authorities..

A philosopher is a person who doesn't care which side his bread is buttered on; he knows he eats both sides anyway.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.

Very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies.

...long before the child learns to talk properly-and long before it learns to think philosophically-the world will have become a habit. A pity, if you ask me.

This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.