#philosophers

An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it. ↗

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

#philosophy #religion #wittgenstein #imagination

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

There is reason to think the most celebrated philosophers would have been bunglers at business; but the reason is because they despised it. ↗

— George Savile

#been #business #celebrated #despised #most

It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system. ↗

— Charles Sanders Peirce

#belief #facts #finding #harmony #inquiring

The tendency of philosophers who know nothing of machinery is to talk of man as a mere mechanism, intending by this to imply that he is without purpose. This shows a lack of understanding of machines as well as of man. ↗

— Arthur Young

#intending #know #lack #machinery #machines

They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death. ↗

— Anton Chekhov

#philosophers #soul #wise #death

Theories of love are found in the works of scientists, philosophers, and theologians. ↗

— Mortimer Adler

#love #philosophers #scientists #theologians #theories

Scientists disagree among themselves but they never fight over their disagreements. They argue about evidence or go out and seek new evidence. Much the same is true of philosophers, historians and literary critics. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#among #argue #critics #disagree #disagreements

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man. ↗

— Diogenes

#contemptible #i #look #man #men