Philosophy

Relaxed Empiricism -- I only believe something to be true if someone I know quite well tells me if happened.
~ Bill Bailey, Edinburgh (2000)

An "analytic" philosopher ... earn[s] this title by grinding away at the consequences of this or that particular proposition as if filing a legal brief. ... [B]ut [p]hilosophy is a way of seeing rather than the tedious business of a lawyer's brief.
~ William E. Barrett, The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization (1978).

The themes that obsess both modern art and existential philosophy are the alienation and strangeness of man in his world; the contradictoriness, feebleness and contingency of human existence; the central and overwhelming reality of time for man who lost his anchorage in the eternal.
~ William E. Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958).

We do not ask ourselves what the ultimate ideas behind our civilization are that have brought us into danger; we do not search for the human face behind the bewildering array of instruments that man has forged; in a word, we do not dare to be philosophical.
~ William E. Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958).

Which came first the intestine or the tapeworm?
~ William S. Burroughs, The South Bank Show, LWT (Interview; 12 April 1992).

Philosophy abounds more than philosophers; and learning, more than learned men.
~ William Benton (W.B.) Clulow, Horæ otiosæ; or, Thoughts, Maxims, and Opinions (1833). Part IV. On Authors, Style, and Literature

A strange anxiety overcame me, a philosophically engendered anxiety caused by seeing philosophy divided and torn in three or even more directions. The unity of my being was torn asunder for I was deeply attracted at times to one group and at other times to the second and even the third. I strove for unity of thought, and in this struggle the cover of sleep became thinner and lighter, the figures of my dream dissolved and I awoke.
~ Wilhelm Dilthey, The Dream (1903 lecture).

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Philosophy: the Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers (1926).

We shall define philosophy as total perspective, as mind overspreading life and forging chaos into unity.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Mansions of Philosophy: A Survey Of Human Life And Destiny (1929). Invitation

Actually, I'm not interested in Zen that much, as a philosophy, nor in joining any movements. I don't pretend to understand it. I just find it comforting. And very similar to jazz. Like jazz, you can't explain it to anyone without losing the experience. It's got to be experienced, because it's feeling, not words.
~ Bill Evans, Down Beat Magazine (1960).

Neither in Europe nor in America will men soon forget the simple, modest courage with which this student of philosophy proclaimed that men have need, not alone of philosophic and scientific truths, but also of peace, happiness, moral balance and serenity, and declared that no philosophic doctrine can be considered adequate, however solid its logical foundations, unless it satisfies the aspirations that lie deep within the mind.
~ Guglielmo Ferrero, quoted in The Atlantic Monthly "William James" (December 1910). Writing about James in a letter to the Figaro (22 September 1910)

Man first examines phenomena, but he is not satisfied till he has reduced them to their causes, and when he has done so he asks to determine the value of the knowledge to which he has attained. This is philosophy properly so called, -- the mother and governing science -- the science of sciences.
~ William Fleming, The Vocabulary of Philosophy, Mental, Moral, and Metaphysical (1856).

Proverbs embody the current and practical philosophy of an age or nation.
~ William Fleming, The Vocabulary of Philosophy, Mental, Moral, and Metaphysical (1856).

Philosophy is for the few.
~ William Gilbert, De Magnete (1600). Preface

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
~ William Godwin, Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries (1831). Essay XIV. Of Youth And Age

Philosophical doubt is not an end but a mean.
~ Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, in Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1858-60). Vol. I Metaphysics. Lecture V

Nature is his mistress, truth his idol.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Plain Speaker (1826). On the Difference Between Writing and Speaking (written in 1825)

Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and he is the truest philosopher who can forget himself.
~ William Hazlitt, in Winterslow, Essays and Characters Written There (1850). Belief, Whether Voluntary?

The science of religion is one science within philosophy; indeed it is the final one. In that respect it presupposes the other philosophical disciplines and is therefore a result.
~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (G.W.F.) Hegel, The Philosophy of Religion (1827).

The wisdom to discern what is essentially and actually right and reasonable in the real world.
~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (G.W.F.) Hegel, The Philosophy of Mind (c. 1818).

Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond.
~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (G.W.F.) Hegel, The Philosophy of Right (1821). Introduction

All that philosophers do is bring forth even more philosophy.
~ Willem Frederik Hermans

The sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, sensed by our emotions, though hidden from our eyes. To this double nature of the visible and invisible world -- to the profound longing for the latter, coupled with the feeling of the sweet necessity for the former, we owe all sound and logical systems of philosophy, truly based on the immutable principles of our nature, just as from the same source arise the most senseless enthusiasms.
~ Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (1791). Chapter 8

The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, from Outspoken Essays (1922).

Humanism ... is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight.
~ William James, from The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel To 'Pragmatism' (1909). V. The Essence of Humanism

Materialism considered as a system of philosophy never tries to explain the why of things.
~ William James

Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens out onto the widest vistas. ... No one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world's perspectives.
~ William James, from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907). The Present Dilemma in Philosophy

[P]hilosophy is only a matter of passionate vision rather than of logic -- logic only finding reasons for the vision afterwards.
~ William James, A Pluralistic Universe (1909). IV. Concerning Fechner

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
~ William James, from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907).

The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one.
~ William James, from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907). What Pragmatism Means

[T]here is only one thing a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
~ William James, published in The Atlantic Monthly (December 1904). Remarks at the Peace Banquet, World Peace Congress. Boston, MA (7 October 1904)

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
~ William James, in The Letters of William James, Vol. 2 (1920). Letter, January 29, 1909

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise -- although the philosophers call it "recognition"!
~ William James, in The Letters of William James, Vol. 2 (1920). Letter to Henri Bergson, June 13, 1907

The great critic ... must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938).

The study of proverbs may ... be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy.
~ William Motherwell, from Scottish Proverbs: Collected and Arranged (1832). Preface

A married philosopher belongs to comedy.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887).

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Can an ass be tragic? To perish under a burden one can neither bear nor throw off? The case of the philosopher.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols (1888).

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art; finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his "divine service."
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the third case: one must be both -- a philosopher.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

What I understand by "philosopher": a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (1888).

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
~ William Osler, Address at the Canadian Medical Association. Montreal, Canada (17 September 1902). Chauvinism in Medicine

Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy.
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

For there was never yet a philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. Act V, scene i

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act I, scene v

There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet

They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless.
~ William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well

We're all gonna die. It's not a new philosophy. It's an ancient philosophy of living your life with consciousness of your coming death.
~ William Shatner, in Has Been (2004 album). You'll Have Time

Philosophy
Can scarce deny
The soul consists of harmony.
~ William Strode, in Wit Restored (1658). In Commendation of Music

So my philosophy becomes that I worry about the things I can affect, and the things I have no control over I move by.
~ Lenny Wilkens

I have argued that philosophy should get rid of scientistic illusions, that it should not try to behave like an extension of the natural sciences (except in the special cases where that is what it is), that it should think of itself as part of a wider humanistic enterprise of making sense of ourselves and of our activities, and that in order to answer many of its questions it needs to attend to other parts of that enterprise, in particular to history.
~ Bernard Williams, Royal Institute of Philosophy, Annual Lectures (2000). Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline

Philosopher! a fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanise
Upon his mother's grave?
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems of Sentiment and Reflection (1800). A Poet's Epitaph (1799)