If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers.

Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.

The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his...

While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato’s Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long...

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...

In Plato’s opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon’s opinion, philosophy was made for man.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

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...

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

The philosopher must station themselves in the middle.

The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.

Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates — but pages might be filled up, as vainly as before, with the sad usage of all sorts of sages, who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore! The loftiest minds...

The ultimate triumph of philosophy would be to cast light upon the mysterious ways in which Providence moves to achieve the designs it has for man.

Philosophers are only men in armor after all.

Englishmen are babes in philosophy and so prefer faction-fighting to the labor of its unfamiliar thought.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel...