The Philosophy Book Quotes

“If God is dead, Nietzsche is perhaps the person who stumbles across the corpse; nevertheless, it is Kant whose fingerprints are all over the murder weapon.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“If you are unable to feel anything, mentally or physically, when you die, it is foolish to let the fear of death cause you pain while you are still alive.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book

“Philosophy is not simply about ideas – it’s a way of thinking. There”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book

“Anyone performing evil actions would be acting against their conscience and would therefore feel uncomfortable; and as we all strive for peace of mind it is not something we would do willingly. Evil, he thought, was done because of lack of wisdom and knowledge. From”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“In 1865 English chemist John Newlands discovered that when the chemical elements are arranged according to atomic weight, those with similar properties occur at every eighth element, like notes of music. This discovery became known as the Law of Octaves, and it helped lead to the development of the Periodic Law of chemical elements still used today.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“380 BCE Plato discusses the nature of justice and the just society in The Republic. 1651 Thomas Hobbes sets out a theory of social contract in his book Leviathan. 1689 John Locke develops Hobbes’s theory in his Second Treatise of Government. 1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes The Social Contract. His views are later adopted by French revolutionaries.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Du Bois is saying that we must believe in the possibility of a fuller life, or in the possibility of progress, to be able to progress at all.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book

“Chomsky was born in 1928 in Pennsylvania, USA, and was raised in a multilingual Jewish household. He studied mathematics, philosophy, and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote a groundbreaking thesis on philosophical linguistics.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“By the 1980s, relations between the East and West were thawing, and the Cold War was coming to a close; the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 offered hope for the new decade.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“ALBERT CAMUS Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. His father was killed a year later in World War I, and Camus was brought up by his mother in extreme poverty.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“The existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne University, and it was here that she met Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she began a lifelong relationship.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“JEAN-PAUL SARTRE Born in Paris, Sartre was just 15 months old when his father died. Brought up by his mother and grandfather, he proved a gifted student, and gained entry to the prestigious École Normale Supérieure.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Karl Popper was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1902. He studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, after which he spent six years as a schoolteacher. It was during this time that he published The Logic of Scientific Discovery, which established him as one of the foremost philosophers of science.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“We might imagine that a good scientific theory is one that we can prove conclusively to be true. The philosopher Karl Popper, however, insists that this is not the case. Instead, he says that what makes a theory scientific is that it is capable of being falsified, or being shown to be wrong by experience.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Heidegger is acknowledged to be one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. He was born in 1889 in Messkirch, Germany, and had early aspirations to be a priest, but after coming across the writings of Husserl he took up philosophy instead.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN Born into a wealthy Viennese family in 1889, Wittgenstein first studied engineering and in 1908 traveled to England to continue his education in Manchester.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Hajime Tanabe was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1885. After studying at Tokyo University, he was appointed associate professor of philosophy at Kyoto University, where he was an active member of what became known as the Kyoto School of philosophy.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“José Ortega y Gasset was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1883. He studied philosophy first in Madrid, then at various German universities—where he became influenced by the philosophy of Immanuel Kant—before settling in Spain as a university professor.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Bertrand Russell was born in Wales in 1872 to an aristocratic family. He had an early interest in mathematics, and went on to study the subject at Cambridge.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“John Dewey was born in Vermont, USA, in 1859. He studied at the University of Vermont, and then worked as a schoolteacher for three years before returning to undertake further study in psychology and philosophy.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Dewey points out that it is important to realize that we can never completely control our environment or transform it to such an extent that we can drive out all uncertainty. At best, he says, we can modify the risky, uncertain nature of the world in which we find ourselves. But life is inescapably risky.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Nietzsche was born in Prussia in 1844 to a religious family; his father, uncle, and grandfathers were all Lutheran ministers.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“The National Society for Women’s Suffrage was set up in Britain in 1868, a year after Mill tried to secure their legal right to vote by arguing for an amendment to the 1867 Reform Act.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Georg Hegel was born in 1770 in Stuttgart, Germany, and studied theology at Tübingen where he met and became friends with the poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the philosopher Friedrich Schelling.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Immanuel Kant was born into a family of financially struggling artisans in 1724, and he lived and worked his whole life in the cosmopolitan Baltic port city of Konigsberg, then part of Prussia.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Though Locke’s empiricist ideas are important, it was his political writing that made him famous. He proposed a social-contract theory of the legitimacy of government and the idea of natural rights to private property.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“John Locke was born in 1632, the son of an English country lawyer.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“1689 John Locke argues for separation of government and religion in A Letter Concerning Toleration.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained

“1517 Theologian Martin Luther writes The Ninety-Five Theses, protesting against clerical abuses. It triggers the start of the Reformation.”
― Will Buckingham, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained