The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence. When I first read this statement, the thought, 'What nonsense!' shot through my mind before I realized that I had just made an evaluation.
There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust. " "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.
For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
I leaf through the ancient philosophers and find my newest discoveries there.
To be a philosopher. . . is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
As a Roman philosopher, Cicero, said of him a few hundred years later, Socrates 'called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil.
Philosophy is nothing but discretion.
At best, the true philosopher can fulfil his mission very imperfectly, which is to pilot himself, or at most a few voluntary companions who may find themselves in the same boat.
What I understand by "philosopher": a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.
A philosopher must be more than a philosopher.
It's very important to remember that the philosophers were social dissidents. They were social critics. The man in the street or woman in the street did not particularly cherish what they said. Socrates was killed.
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.
If someone asks, ‘But what in the end is a philosopher?’ I would say ‘A philosopher is a human being who fights in theory. ’
The philosophers likewise assume that in Nature there is nothing in vain, so that everything that is not the product of human industry serves a certain purpose, which may be known or unknown to us.
This is too difficult for a mathematician. It takes a philosopher. The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Why is it the philosopher who is expected to be easier and not some scientist who is even more inaccessible?
This is a question too difficult for a mathematician. It should be asked of a philosopher"(when asked about completing his income tax form)
There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.
A philosopher is a man who can look at an empty glass with a smile.
Science fiction has a way of letting you talk about where we are in the world and letting you be a bit of a pop philosopher without being didactic.