An Introduction to Philosophy Quotes

“There are many subjects upon which, if we hold an opinion at all, we should hold it tentatively, waiting for more light, and retaining a willingness to be enlightened. Many a bitter and fruitless quarrel might be avoided, if more persons found it possible to maintain this philosophical attitude of mind. Philosophy is, after all, reflection, and the reflective man must realize that he is probably as liable to error as are other men. He is not infallible, nor has the limit of human knowledge been attained in his day and generation. He who realizes this will not assume that his neighbor is always wrong, and he will come to have that wide, conscientious tolerance, which is not indifference, but which is at the farthest remove from the zeal of mere bigotry.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“Men can, it is true, eat and sleep and go through the routine of the day, without giving thought to science or religion or philosophy, but few will defend such an existence. As a matter of fact, those who have attained to some measure of intellectual and moral development do assume, consciously or unconsciously, some rather definite attitude toward life, and this is not independent of their conviction as to what the world is and means.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“idealist, Hume a skeptic, and Mill what has been called a sensationalist; yet all were empiricists of a sort, and emphasized the necessity of founding our knowledge upon experience.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“When little is known about things, it does not seem impossible for one man to learn that little.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“The Stoic tells us of what the world consists; what was the beginning and what will be the end of things; what is the relation of the system of things to God. He develops a physics and a logic as well as a system of ethics. The Epicurean informs us that the world originated in a rain of atoms through space; he examines into the foundations of human knowledge; and he proceeds to make himself comfortable in a world from which he has removed those disturbing elements, the gods. The Skeptic decides that there is no such thing as truth, before he enunciates the dogma that it is not worth while to worry about anything. The philosophy of each school includes a view of the system of things as a whole. The philosopher still regarded the universe of knowledge as his province.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“Appearances and realities are experiences which are observed to be related in certain ways. That which is not open to observation at all, that of which we have, and can have, no experience, we have no reason to call the reality of anything. We have, in truth, no reason to talk about it at all, for we know nothing whatever about it; and when we do talk about it, it is because we are laboring under a delusion.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“When we say we see a tree at a distance, we must mean, then, that we know from certain visual experiences which we have that by moving a certain distance we will be able to touch a tree. And what does it mean to move a certain distance? In the last analysis it means to us to have a certain quantity of movement sensations. Thus”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“Now, a small bluish patch of color is not, strictly speaking, a tree; but for us it represents the tree. Suppose that we walk toward the tree. Do we continue to see what we saw before? Of course, we say that we continue to see the same tree; but it is plain that what we immediately perceive, what is given in consciousness, does not remain the same as we move. Our blue patch of color grows larger and larger; it ceases to be blue and faint; at the last it has been replaced by an expanse of vivid green, and we see the tree just before us. During our whole walk we have been seeing the tree. This appears to mean that we have been having a whole series of visual experiences, no two of which were just alike, and each of which was taken as a representative of the tree. Which of these representatives is most like the tree? Is the tree really a faint blue, or is it really a vivid green? Or is it of some intermediate color? Probably”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“Shall I call it a quality of a thing, or shall I call it a sensation? To this I answer: I may call it either the one or the other, according to its setting among other experiences. We”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“Are not things presented in our experience only as we have sensations? what is it to perceive a thing? is it not to have sensations? how, then, can we distinguish between sensations and things?”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“It will be observed that, in distinguishing between sensations and things imaginary, we never go beyond the circle of our experiences. We do not reach out to a something beyond or behind experiences, and say: When such a reality is present, we may affirm that we have a sensation, and when it is not, we may call the experience imaginary. If there were such a reality as this, it would do us little good, for since it is not supposed to be perceived directly, we should have to depend upon the sensations to prove the presence of the reality, and could not turn to the reality and ask it whether we were or were not experiencing a sensation.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“All our sensations are, therefore, experiences which take their place in a certain setting. This is our ultimate criterion. We need not take the word of the philosopher for it. We need only reflect, and ask ourselves how we know that, in a given case, we are seeing or hearing or touching something, and are not merely imagining it.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“As has been seen, our author accepts without question, the psychological doctrine that the mind is shut up within the circle of the messages that are conducted to it along the sensory nerves, and that it cannot directly perceive anything truly external.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“should men study philosophy? The question is a natural one, for man is a rational being, and when the worth of a thing is not at once evident to him, he usually calls for proof of its worth.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“Observation precedes reflection. When we come to think definitely about the mind, we are all apt to make use of notions which we have derived from our experience of external things.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“Of course, these have to do with things sooner or later, for our mathematical reasonings would be absolutely useless to us if they could not be applied to the world of things; but in mathematical reasonings we abstract from things for the time being, confident that we can come back to them when we want to do so, and can make use of the results obtained in our operations.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“Take psychology as an instance. How does it happen that the physicist calmly develops his doctrine without finding it necessary to make his bow to philosophy at all, while the psychologist is at pains to explain that his book is to treat psychology as "a natural science," and will avoid metaphysics as much as possible?”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“The philosopher is the man to whom is committed what is left when we have taken away what has been definitely established or is undergoing investigation according to approved scientific methods. He is Lord of the Uncleared Ground, and may wander through it in his compassless, irresponsible way, never feeling that he is lost, for he has never had any definite bearings to lose.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy

“In the Middle Ages there gradually grew up rather a sharp distinction between those things that can be known through the unaided reason and those things that can only be known through a supernatural revelation. The term "philosophy" came to be synonymous with knowledge attained by the natural light of reason. This seems to imply some sort of a limitation to the task of the philosopher. Philosophy is not synonymous with all knowledge.”
― George Stuart Fullerton, An Introduction to Philosophy