#philosophers

I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker's questions to become comprehensible. ↗

— Karl Jaspers

#alone #become #comprehensible #discovered #enters

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding. ↗

— Karl Jaspers

#essential #everything #great #history #philosophers

It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers. ↗

— Thomas Kuhn

#analysis #crisis #device #field #generally

Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic. ↗

— Hu Shih

#already #ancient #another #china #early

It is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views. ↗

— Morris Raphael Cohen

#adopt #been #certain #circumstances #determined

It has been a long time since philosophers have read men’s souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us. ↗

— Emil Cioran

#men

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#existentialism #philosophers #men

You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings. ↗

— Catherine the Great

#beings #empress #i #i am #i write

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity." Beckett ↗

— Beckett

#philosophy #poetry #poets #intelligence

Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her. ↗

— Iain Pears

#dialectics #education #greatness #hypatia-of-alexandria #knowledge