Philosophical Integrity Quotes

Philosophers are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration" most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.

AI makes philosophy honest

Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery.

The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.

This sort of thing has got to be stopped. Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business.

A married philosopher is a comic character.

The libertarian must never advocate or prefer a gradual, as opposed to an immediate and rapid, approach to his goal. For by doing so, he undercuts the overriding importance of his own goals and principles. And if he himself values his own goals so lightly, how highly will others value them.

As for philosophy, it makes an architect high-minded and not self-assuming, but rather renders him courteous, just, and honest without avariciousness. This is very important, for no work can be rightly done without honesty and incorruptibility.

When philosophers try to be politicians they generally cease to be philosophers.

Either I do not corrupt the young or, if I do, it is unwillingly.

A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me.

In my view, only those who have had the courage to work through Lacan's anti-philosophy without faltering deserve to be called 'contemporary philosophers'.

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.

Clearness marks the sincerity of philosophers.

Since I believe that a person's philosophical point of view has little meaning if it is not matched by being and action, I found myself willingly wed to an endless series of unpopular causes, experiences which I feel enriched my writing as much as they depleted other aspects of my life.

Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.

I have even seen the writings suggesting that I am playing a deep game, that I am using the present turmoil to foist my fads on India, and am making religious experiments at India's expense. I can only answer that Satyagraha is made of sterner stuff. There is nothing reserved and nothing secret in it.

It's not enough to be in the majority, you have to stand for something.

Philosophy must indeed recognize the possibility that the people rise to it, but must not lower itself to the people.