Quotes on Religion and Philosophy

Thomas Aquinas:

Of all human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is the more perfect, the more sublime, the more useful, and the more agreeable.

Summa Contra Gentiles

Martin Heidegger:

We assert now that being is the proper and sole theme of philosophy. This is not our own invention; it is a way of putting the theme which comes to life at the beginning of philosophy in antiquity...

The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927)

Martin Heidegger:

To anyone who has even an approximate understanding of the concept of philosophy and its history, the notion of a world-view philosophy is an absurdity.

The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927)

Edmund Husserl:

All of modern philosophy, in the original sense of a universal ultimately grounding science, is, according to our presentation, at least since Kant and Hume, a single struggle between two ideas of science: the idea of an objectivistic philosophy on the ground of the pre-given world and the idea of a philosophy on the ground of absolute, transcendental subjectivity...

Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (1937)

Karl Jaspers:

The freedom that can be attained in philosophizing cannot be handed down by the doctrine of an institution. Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.

On My Philosophy (1941)

Karl Marx:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

The German Idealogy (1845-46)

Friedrich Nietzsche:

If philosophy ever manifested itself as helpful, redeeming, or prophylactic, it was in a healthy culture. The sick, it made ever sicker.

Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Charles Peirce:

Few persons care to study logic, because everybody conceives himself to be proficient enough in the art of reasoning already. But I observe that this satisfaction is limited to one's own ratiocination, and does not extend to that of other men.

Charles Peirce, The Fixation of Belief.

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Thomas Reid:

[N]o philosophical opinion, however ancient, however generally received, ought to rest upon authority. There is no presumption in requiring evidence for it, or in regulating our belief by the evidence we can find.

Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785)

Bertrand Russell:

The essential characteristic of philosophy which makes it a study distinct from science, is criticism. It examines critically the principles employed in science and in daily life; it searches out any inconsistencies there may be in these principles, and it only accepts them when, as the result of a critical inquiry, no reason for rejecting them has appeared.

The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

Baruch Spinoza:

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670).

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Lao Tzu:

The sage does not accumulate (for himself). The more that he expends for others, the more does he possess of his own; the more that he gives to others, the more does he have himself.

Tao Te Ching