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As Voltaire once remarked, "It is the privilege of the real genius, especially one who opens up a new path, to make great mistakes with impunity."

— Bryan Magee Confessions of a Philosopher (1997)

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More quotes by Bryan Magee

The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers.

Confessions of a Philosopher (1997)

I have very strongly this feeling... that our everyday life is at one and the same time banal, overfamiliar, platitudinous and yet mysterious and extraordinary.

Heidegger and Modern Existentialism (1977)

It could be that the total scenario for human beings is an insoluble mystery until we die, followed by nothing at all.

Confessions of a Philosopher (1997)

Because of the fundamental character of these problems, and because Kant did not solve them, confronting them has been the most important challenge to philosophy ever since.

Confessions of a Philosopher (1997)

I am as baffled now by the larger metaphysical questions of my existence as I was when I was a child — indeed more so, because my understanding of the depths and difficulties of the questions themselves is now so much greater.

Confessions of a Philosopher (1997)

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Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.

Socrates

Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël De l’Allemagne [Germany (1813)

Like every 'intellectual', a philosophy teacher is a petty bourgeois. When he opens his mouth, it is petty-bourgeois ideology that speaks: its resources and ruses are infinite.

Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Bryan Magee (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.