Philosophers Educational Posters & Prints, pg 4/4

Christine de Pizan
b. c.1362; Venice, Italy
d. c.1431

Christine de Pizan was a feminist philosopher and first professional women writer in the medieval era. Her first works as a writer was to provide for her family after the death of her husband. She then became a critic of Jean de Meun who slandered women in his Romance of the Rose.

The illustration for the presentation frontispiece of Christine de Pizan presenting her Collected Works to Queen Isabeau of France consists solely of females.

Plato
b. c. 427 BC; Greece
d. c. 347 BC

Plato, a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

Plato quotes ~
• “A hero is born among a hundred, a wise man is found among a thousand, but an accomplished one might not be found even among a hundred thousand men.”
• “Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.”
• “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
• “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”
• “He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.”

Pythagoras
b. c. 569 BC; Greece
d. c. 475 BC

Pythagoras quotes ~
• “There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.”
• “Above all things, reverence yourself.”
• “Choose rather to be strong of soul than strong of body.”
• “The oldest, shortest words - “yes” and “no” - are those which require the most thought.”
• “There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman.”

Jean Rostand, Photographic Print

Jean Rostand
b. 10-30-1894; France
d. 9-4-1977

Jean Rostand was an experimental biologist who was a philosopher about the responsibilities of humanity and our place in nature, a science writer, and activist against nuclear proliferation and the death penalty.

His father was playwright Edmond Rostand most noted for his play Cyrano de Bergerac.

Jean Rostand quotes:
• “A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us worthy of using it.”
• “It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.”
• “I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.”
• “Kill a man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conquerer. Kill everyone, and you are a god.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
b. 6-28-1712; Geneva, Switzerland
d. 7-2-1778; France

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher, author and composer, based his philosophical works of the principle of the natural goodness of humanity and the corrupting influence of civilization and society. Rousseau believed individual liberty was crushed by division of labor and called for a social contract investing power in governing structures. Rousseau's novel Emile: or, On Education, describes the stages of child development with his conception of the evolution of culture.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau quotes:
• “The noblest work in education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason! This beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated.”
• “All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.”
• “Base souls have no faith in great individuals.”
• “Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.”
• “I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.”
• “However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.”
• “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in shackles.”
• “The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.”
• “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”
• “You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.”

• The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Bertrand Russell
b. 5-18-1872; Wales
d. 2-7-1970; Wales

Social reformer and pacifist Bertrand Arthur William Russell was a philosopher, logician, mathematician, and historian. He was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought”.

Bertrand Russell quotes ~
• “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither . . . over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.”
• “A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
• “Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.”
• “If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.”
• “Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”

• The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell

Friedrich Schiller
b. 11-10-1759; Germany
d. 5-9-1805

Friedrich Schiller, philosopher, poet, historian, & dramatist, inspired Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” with his poem “An die Freude”. Schiller also had a deep friendship with Goethe.

Friedrich Schiller quotes:
• “A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished.”
• “Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual.”
• “Art is the daughter of freedom.”
• “Freedom can occur only through education.”
• “Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays.”
• “In the society, where people are just parts in a larger machine, individuals are unable to develop fully.”

• On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller

Arthur Schopenhauer
b. 2-22-1788; Prussia
d. 9-21-1860

Arthur Schopenhauer quotes:
• “The goal is not so much to see that which no one has seen, but to see that which everyone sees, in a totally different way.”

• The World as Will & Representation

Seneca
b. c. 4 BC; Cordoba, Hispania
d. 65 AD

• Dare Poster - “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” Seneca

Adam Smith
bap. 6-5-1723; Scotland
d. 7-17-1790

• The Wealth of Nations

Socrates
b. c. 470 BC; Greece
d. c. 399 BC

“Wisdom begins in wonder.”

Solon
b. c. 638 BC; Greece
d. c. 558 BC

Sun Tzu
b. c. 544 BC (traditional); China
d. c. 496 BC (traditional)

Ancient Chinese philosopher and general Sun Tzu is traditionally believed to have authored The Art of War, a treatise on winning battles. Sun Tzu saw the ideal leader as a Taoist master, a spiritual aspect that adds the dimension of diplomacy, planning and resolving conflicts.

Sun Tzu quotes ~
• “Possessions make you poor, wealth is measurable only in experience.”
• “All war is deception.”
• “If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.”
• “In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.”
• “There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.”
• “You have to believe in yourself.”

Emanuel Swedenborg
b. 1-29-1688; Sweden
d. 3-28-1772

Swedenborg was a Swedish philosopher, Christian mystic, and theologian who had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. Notable people who were influenced by Swedenborg include William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung, August Strindberg, Charles Baudelaire, Balzac, William Butler Yeats, John “Johnny Appleseed” Chapman, William James, and Helen Keller.

Emanuel Swedenborg quotes ~
• “He who is in evil, is also in the punishment of evil.”
• “Love consists in desiring to give what is our own to another and feeling his delight as our own.”
• “True charity is the desire to be useful to others with no thought of recompense.”

• Collected Works of Emanuel Swedenborg

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
b. 5-1-1881; France
d. 4-10-1955; NY

• more Teilhard posters

Henry David Thoreau
b. 7-12-1817; Concord, MA
d. 12-31-1836

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
Walden, Henry David Thoreau

• more Henry David Thoreau posters
• more Writers Who Changed the World posters
• ecology posters

Miguel de Unamuno
b. 9-29-1864; Basque, Spain
d. 12-31-1936

Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a philosopher and writer. He was opposed to Franco and died under house arrest in 1936.

Miguel de Unamuno quotes ~
• “Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.”
• “True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.”
• “Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you.”
• “There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. Man is the more man - that is, the more divine - the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.”
• “Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.”
• “It is sad not to love, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.”
• “Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it is only suffering that makes us persons.”
• “Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them.”
• “That which the Fascists hate above all else, is intelligence.”
• “If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.”

• Tragic Sense of Life by Unamuno

Zeno of Citium

Zeno of Citium quotes:
• “Wellbeing is attained by little and little, and nevertheless is no little thing itself.”
• “No evil is honorable: but death is honorable; therefore death is not evil.”
• “Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are; the reason or formula by which the world goes on.”

• A Summary of Stoic Philosophy: Zeno of Citium in Diogenes Laertius Book Seven

• perspective posters
• Albrecht Dürer posters