#philosopher

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

It might seem that the empirical philosopher is the slave of his material, but that the pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#mathematician #music #musician #philosopher #philosophy

The outstanding characteristic of Western scholarship is its specialization and cutting up of knowledge into different departments. The over-development of logical thinking and specialization, with its technical phraseology, has brought about the curious fact of modern civilization, that philosophy has been so far relegated to the background, far behind politics and economics, that the average man can pass it by without a twinge of conscience. The feeling of the average man, even of the educated person, is that philosophy is a "subject" which he can beset afford to go without. This is certainly a strange anomaly of modern culture, for philosophy, which should lie closest to men's bosom and business, has become most remote from life. It was not so in the classical civilization of the Greeks and Romans, and it was not so in China, where the study of wisdom of life formed the scholars' chief occupation. Either the modern man is not interested in the problems of living, which are the proper subject of philosophy, or we have gone a long way from the original conception of philosophy. ↗

— Lin Yutang

#philosophy #specialization #business

Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country? Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this. Socrates: How so, Plato? Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is a sculptor. Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they have no need to be reminded. Plato: That is correct. Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#civil-liberty #free-country #freedom #freedom-of-thought #gadfly

Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll.... It does not mean that everything in life is relative. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#relative #word #life

The theologian considers sin mainly as an offence against God; the moral philosopher as contrary to reasonableness. ↗

— Thomas Aquinas

#considers #contrary #god #mainly #moral

Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions. ↗

— Isaiah Berlin

#childish #persist #philosophers #questions #who

St. Paul would say to the philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to attain the Divine. That is why all pre-Christian philosophy is theological at its summit. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#created #divine #god #man #paul

Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make. ↗

— Gaston Bachelard

#make #never #philosophers #probably #two