No girl who is going to marry need bother to win a college degree; she just naturally becomes a "Master of Arts" and a "Doctor of ...Philosophy" after catering to an ordinary man for a few years.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is ...what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The doctor of Geneva stamped the sand That lay impounding the Pacific swell,... Patted his stove-pipe hat and tugged his shawl.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Theology starts with dogmas, philosophy begins with problems. Philosophy sees the problem first, theology has the answer in advanc...e. We must not, however, disregard another important difference. Not only are the problems of philosophy not identical with the problems of religion; their status is not the same. Philosophy is, in a sense, a kind of thinking that has a beginning but no end. In it, the awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. Its answers are questions in disguise; every new answer giving rise to new questions. In religion, on the other hand, the mystery of the answer hovers over all questions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of ...philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the history of human inquiry, philosophy has the place of the initial central sun, seminal and tumultuous; from time to time it... throws of some portion of itself to take station as a science, a planet, cool and well regulated, progressing steadily towards a distant final state.... Is it not possible that the next century may see the birth, through the joint efforts of philosophers, grammarians, and numerous other students of language, of a true and comprehensive science of language? Then we shall have rid ourselves of one more part of philosophy (there will still be plenty left) in the only way we ever can get rid of philosophy, by kicking it upstairs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Those who have handled sciences have either been men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant; they ...only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course; it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts t...o answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest--whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories--comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo pro...blems.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, b...ut universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »