Henry David Thoreau Quotes

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers.

Philosophers are adults who persist in asking childish questions.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Philosophy is for the few.

What I really love about philosophers and psychologists is that they sound smart.

A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

Anything that gives us new knowledge gives us an opportunity to be more rational.

Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make.

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's.

The University conceives of itself as dedicated to the power of the intellect. Its commitment is to the way of reason.

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

My father believed, like Pericles, that a man's genius could be easily judged by the number of unenlightened fools set in phalanx against his ideas.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values.

I don't see myself as a philosopher. That's awfully boring.

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

My father was a classic intellectual. From him I learned devotion, and I also learned about the life of the mind.

Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

I feel friendship towards philosophers, but towards sophists, teachers of literature, or any other such kind of godforsaken people, I neither feel friendship now, nor may I ever do so in the future.

Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.