Philosophers & Representative Quotes - Page 2/3
- Thomas Aquainus (1225-1274, Sicily) »
Of all the pursuits open to men, the search for wisdom is more perfect, more sublime, more profitable, and more full of joy.
Italian priest. Considered by many Catholics to be the Church's greatest theologian and philosopher. "Aquinas" refers to his residence rather than his surname. At one point, two of his brothers hired a prostitute to seduce him, but he drove her away, wielding a burning stick.
His most important and enduring work is the Summa Theologica. - Rene Descartes (1596-1650, France) »
There is nothng so strange & unbelievable that it has not been said by one philosoher or another.
French philosopher & mathematician. Did the bulk of his work in Holland. Died of pneumonia in Stockholm, where he had been invited to tutor the 19-year-old Queen Christina of Sweden. Accustomed to working in a warm bed till noon, he was shocked by having to teach in a freezing library at 5 AM.
Seventeen years after his death, the Catholic Church placed his works on the Index of Prohibited Books. - John Locke (1632-1704, England) »
The only fence against the world is through a knowlege of it.
English physician & philosopher. His father was a country lawyer, mother reported to be very beautiful. Never married nor had any children. Several passages from his Second Treatise are reproduced verbatim in the Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Jefferson wrote; "Bacon, Locke and Newton, I consider them the greatest men that ever lived, without any exception." - George Berkeley (1685-1753, Ireland) »
All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth — in a world, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world — have not any subsistence without a mind.
Anglo-Irish philosopher. His affectionate disposition and genial manners made him much loved and held in warm regard by many of his contemporaries.
Theorized that individuals cannot know if an object is; they can only know if an object is perceived, concluding that all individuals know about an object is their perception of it. - David Hume (1711-1776, Scotland, Edinburgh) »
The mind is a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearence; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.
Scotish philosopher, economist, historian. The Stanford page calls him "The most important philosopher ever to write in English." Heavily influenced by Locke and Berkeley.
His father died just after David's second birthday. His mother devoted herself to rearing and educating her children. Hume never married. Told a friend, "There is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books." - Immanuel Kant (1724-1804, Germany) »
It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.
His his most important work » The Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation into the limitations and structure of reason itself. It is recognized as one of the greatest works in the history of Philosophy. Kant spent an entire decade working on it in isolation.
Much of his work addresses the question » What can we know? (epistemology). He was the 4th of 11 children (only 4 reached adulthood). He never traveled more than 100 miles from home his entire lfe. Kant received a stern education – strict, punitive, and disciplinary. - The categorical imperative forms the centerpiece of Kant's moral philosophy, best known by the following formulation: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873, England, London) »
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
British philosopher, economist, moral and political theorist. His father taught him to learn Greek at age 3 and Latin at 8. By 14 he had read most of the Greek and Latin classics. His life-long goal was to reform the world in the interest of human well-being.
At age 20, he suffered a sudden attack of intense depression, which lasted many months. He came to believe that his capacity for emotion had been severely dimnished by his father's rigorous training His intellect had been educated but not his feelings. In the reading of Wordsworth's poetry he found the cure that he needed, and the depression gradually disappeared.
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