A Quote by F. Sionil Jose

My reading of philosophy and history is desultory; I know so much and yet so little.

F. Sionil Jose

Quote Topics

History Know Little Much Philosophy Reading

Quote Author

F. Sionil Jose
Filipino - Writer
Born: December 3, 1924

Desultory reading is delightful, but to be beneficial, our reading must be carefully directed.

Seneca the Younger

I can remember picking up weighty tomes on the history of science and the history of philosophy and reading those when I was small.

Peter Ackroyd

We must consider how very little history there is--I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy, of history is conjecture.

Samuel Johnson

Can one understand politics without understanding history, especially the history of political thought, and will this distinguish political philosophy from some other kinds of philosophy (such as, perhaps, logic) to which the study of history is not integral?

Raymond Geuss

I am opposing it with an idea of the history of philosophy as a history of philosophers, that is, a history of mortal, fragile and limited creatures like you and I. I am against the idea of clean, clearly distinct epochs in the history of philosophy or indeed in anything else. I think that history is always messy, contingent, plural and material. I am against the constant revenge of idealism in how we think about history.

Simon Critchley

I grew up in a household that really encouraged reading and writing. My mother loves philosophy and is constantly reading philosophy and talking to me about different philosophers and different ways of life.

Lulu Wang

My library is segregated into philosophy, history, general reading, travel, my own books... and only three cookbooks.

Sudha Murty

As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.

Karl Jaspers

I went to Notre Dame. I don't know if that has any relevance, but maybe we all had a little too much philosophy and theology.

William Mapother

I'd love to go back to school for philosophy. I love philosophy, so I'm always reading philosophy books, annoying my girlfriend with that type of stuff.

Parker Young

I did not know much history when I became a bombardier in the U.S. Air Force in World War II. Only after the War did I see that we, like the Nazis, had committed atrocities... Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, my own bombing missions. And when I studied history after the War, I learned from reading on my own, not from my university classes, about the history of U.S. expansion and imperialism.

Howard Zinn

Gardening is really an extended form of reading, of history and philosophy. The garden itself has become like writing a book. I walk around and walk around. Apparently people often see me standing there and they wave to me and I don't see them because I am reading the landscape.

Jamaica Kincaid

History is a strange experience. The world is quite small now; but history is large and deep. Sometimes you can go much farther by sitting in your own home and reading a book of history, than by getting onto a ship or an airplane and traveling a thousand miles.

Gilbert Highet

I'm not against knowing the history of white people in the U.S. - that's not the point. The point is that there's so much greater history. We don't know about Native Americans. Very basically, we don't know that much about African American history, except that they were enslaved. You only get bits and pieces.

Luis J. Rodriguez

For me, the two weeks between Christmas and Twelfth Night have come to be reserved for desultory reading. The pressure of the holiday is over, the weather outside is frightful, there are lots of leftovers to munch on, vacation hours are being used up.