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Friday 19 October 2012

Philosophy quiz


James over at nourishingobscurity.com recently referred to a quote by W C Fields which sums up this post. I like W C Fields' quotes, but I'd not heard this one.

Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against. 

Anyhow, this gave me the idea of a philosophy quiz. Here are a number of quotes from W C Fields and Immanuel Kant. All you have to do is decide which man was responsible for each quote and who was the better philosopher.

  1. The quality of sensation, colour, taste, etc., is always empirical and cannot be conceived a priori.
  2. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull. 
  3. There are three analogies of experience.
  4. Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch...
  5. Assume that a compound thing, a substance, consists of simple parts.
  6. Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream
  7. The transcendental realist is, therefore, an empirical realist.
  8. There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation. 
  9. There are three kinds of Antinomies of pure Reason.
  10. Some things are better than sex, and some are worse, but there's nothing exactly like it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps one is a good philosopher and one needs to get out more.

Demetrius said...

Easy peasy, the odd numbers are Fields, and the even ones by Kant. Cogito ergo sum.

James Higham said...

Ah, shall have to come back to this, AKH.

Sam Vega said...

You seemed to have worked harder at finding the boring quotes from Kant, than you did at finding the interesting ones from Fields. Fields was trying for one-liners, but Kant could only fit three compound German nouns into a line...

A K Haart said...

Roger - yes, he spent a lot of time in his own head.

Demetrius - spot on!

James - yes, it's tricky!

Sam - short sentences were a problem with Kant. He didn't go a bundle on one-liners.

Health is Wealth said...

Personally I like W. C. Fields quotes. Thanks for sharing!!