Defined Quote by Leslie Stephen

PHILISTINE, n. One whose mind is the creature of its environment, following the fashion in thought, feeling and sentiment. He is sometimes learned, frequently…

— Ambrose Bierce

A philistine is a full-grown person whose interests are of a material and commonplace nature, and whose mentality is formed of the stock ideas…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of…

— Matthew Arnold

Philistinism! - We have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much of the thing.

— Matthew Arnold

A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of…

— Arthur Schopenhauer

“Impatient of the veiling with which the man of higher type gives the world imaginative meaning, the barbarian and the Philistine, who is the…

— Smith III, Ted J

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance.

— Anonymous

To philosophize means to make vivid.

— Novalis

Cynicism is only intellectual sloth.

— Henry Rollins

Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere.

— Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Philosophizing means, then, to ascend from public dogma to essentially private knowledge.

— Leo Strauss

Indifference breeds animosity.

— Sarah Ban Breathnach