States will never be happy until rulers become philosophers or philosophers become rulers.
philosophersquotes
He is divine – but then I call all philosophers that.
There will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obligated to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them.
Repeating the commonplaces about atheism and materialism and sophistry, which are the stock-accusations against all philosophers when there is nothing else to be said of them.
This principle of nature being very remote from the conceptions of philosophers, I forbore to describe it in that book, least I should be accounted an extravagant freak and so prejudice my readers against all those things which were the main designe of the book.
Their [philosophers] thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order.
It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.
I had become aware, as early as my college days, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible can be imagined, that has not been held by one of the philosophers.
As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
This is how philosophers should salute each other: ‘Take your time.
