Who is you favorite philosopher and why?

[<daleader>]

Well the title speaks for it self. Who is your favorite philosopher and why?

[dancinginchains]

I can't say I'm acquainted with enough philosophers to make that distinction, then again I have a hard time picking favorites no matter what its about usually.

I'd have to say at the moment I like St. Thomas Aquinas quite a bit. I'm trying to look into some more recent philosophers but I like what I've learned so far of Husserl and Heidegger as well. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around Phenomenology, then again I've only been studying philosophy for a year.

[Didymos Thomas]

Hume. He approached philosophy as any philosopher should - with skepticism.

[Pythagorean]

I would have to say Plato. Because he was a philosopher who believed in love and beauty and vision and he believed in the existence of a higher realm.

--

[de Silentio]

I agree with Pythagorean, Plato is my favorite. His works seem more approachable than other philosophers, yet they are concise in their endevour to explore human nature.

I always start of my philosophy studies for the year by reading Plato. I start with the simple and powerful Apology, then move to the Crito. There is something about those works that rejuvinates me.

[Vasska]

Nietzsche for the simple fact that I haven't read many other philosophers yet. But also because most of the things he says are indeed in my opinion right and I agree with him on many points. This of course might change if i read some more work from him.

I'm reading The Great Philosophers now, which is a series of reviews about many philosophers including Plato, Hume, Russell, Spinoza and others. I bought it because I'm not sure which philosophers are the right one's for me. At the moment I'm reading chapter one (i bought it yesterday) and like to read some more Socrates and Plato.

[Aristoddler]

Confucius.
He valued human life so much to the point that he based his philosophical teachings around maintaining the golden rule, and living life accordingly.

Aristotle was just easier to play with, when it came to choosing a screen-name for myself, but he comes a very close second.

[Dustin]

For now I would say Emerson... but what is favorite...

A great man is always willing to be little.

A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before."

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

A man is usually more careful of his money than he is of his principles.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

All diseases run into one, old age.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

Manners require time, and nothing is more vulgar than haste.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

Nature hates calculators.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

Nothing external to you has any power over you.

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Our best thoughts come from others.

Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

Reality is a sliding door.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.

The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

There is more difference in the quality of our pleasures than in the amount.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

We are wiser than we know.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour.

What you are comes to you.

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

Who you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you're saying.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

[Vasska]

Originally Posted by Dustin

text omitted...

I like a lot of his quotes but just don't get this quote:

Nature hates calculators.

[Dustin]

Originally Posted by Vasska

I like a lot of his quotes but just don't get this quote:

It's from his second series of essays:

How easily, if fate would suffer it, we might keep forever these beautiful limits, and adjust ourselves, once for all, to the perfect calculation of the kingdom of known cause and effect. In the street and in the newspapers, life appears so plain a business that manly resolution and adherence to the multiplication-table through all weathers will insure success.

But ah! presently comes a day, or is it only a half-hour, with its angel-whispering, --which discomfits the conclusions of nations and of years! Tomorrow again everything looks real and angular, the habitual standards are reinstated, common sense is as rare as genius,--is the basis of genius, and experience is hands and feet to every enterprise;--and yet, he who should do his business on this understanding would be quickly bankrupt.

Power keeps quite another road than the turnpikes of choice and will; namely the subterranean and invisible tunnels and channels of life. It is ridiculous that we are diplomatists, and doctors, and considerate people: there are no dupes like these. Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not. God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from us the past and the future. We would look about us, but with grand politeness he draws down before us an impenetrable screen of purest sky, and another behind us of purest sky.

'You will not remember,' he seems to say, `and you will not expect.' All good conversation, manners, and action, come from a spontaneity which forgets usages and makes the moment great. Nature hates calculators; her methods are saltatory and impulsive. Man lives by pulses; our organic movements are such; and the chemical and ethereal agents are undulatory and alternate; and the mind goes antagonizing on, and never prospers but by fits. We thrive by casualties.

Our chief experiences have been casual. The most attractive class of people are those who are powerful obliquely and not by the direct stroke; men of genius, but not yet accredited; one gets the cheer of their light without paying too great a tax. Theirs is the beauty of the bird or the morning light, and not of art. In the thought of genius there is always a surprise; and the moral sentiment is well called "the newness," for it is never other; as new to the oldest intelligence as to the young child;--"the kingdom that cometh without observation."

In like manner, for practical success, there must not be too much design. A man will not be observed in doing that which he can do best. There is a certain magic about his properest action which stupefies your powers of observation, so that though it is done before you, you wist not of it. The art of life has a pudency, and will not be exposed. Every man is an impossibility until he is born; every thing impossible until we see a success.

The ardors of piety agree at last with the coldest skepticism,--that nothing is of us or our works,--that all is of God. Nature will not spare us the smallest leaf of laurel. All writing comes by the grace of God, and all doing and having. I would gladly be moral and keep due metes and bounds, which I dearly love, and allow the most to the will of man; but I have set my heart on honesty in this chapter, and I can see nothing at last, in success or failure, than more or less of vital force supplied from the Eternal.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked-for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new and very unlike what he promised himself.