A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.
A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.
Actual philosophers… are commanders and law-givers: they say ''thus it shall be!'', it is they who determine the Wherefore and Whither of mankind, and they possess for this task the preliminary work of all the philosophical laborers, of all those who have subdued the past — they reach for the future with creative hand, and everything that is or has been becomes for them a means, an instrument, a hammer. Their ''knowing'' is creating, their creating is a law giving, their will to truth is — will to power. Are their such philosophers today? Have there been such philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers?
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?
And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the Sun is lost, and the earth, and no mans wit can well direct him where to look for it.
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?
As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.
Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never.
Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.
Being a philosopher, I have a problem for every solution.
Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained, after his time, but mind; which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume in 1737.
Do not all charms fly at the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: we know her woof, her texture; she is given in the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, conquer all mysteries by rule and line, empty the haunted air, and gnome mine unweave a rainbow.
Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.
Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.