INTP

Parmenides

"Let reason alone decide."

INTP

René Descartes

"Cogito ergo sum."

("I think therefore I am.")

INTP

Leonardo da Vinci

"The Human foot - a masterpiece of engineering."

INTP

Baruch Spinoza

"The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free (...) I call  him free who is led solely by reason."
 

INTP

Immanuel Kant

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason."
 

INTP

Charles Darwin

"A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections - a mere heart of stone."

INTP

Edmund Husserl

INTP

Leo Strauss

"Thinking is seeing something noticeable, which makes you see something you weren't noticing."
 

INTP

Albert Einstein

"To punish me for my contempt for authority, Fate made me an authority myself."
 

INTP

S.E. Landsburg

"In the absence of explicit contracts, people who lecture other people on their 'responsibilities' are almost always up to no good."
 

INTP

Jürgen Habermas

INTP

Adam Smith

"Though your judgments in matters of speculation, though your sentiments in matters of taste, are quite opposite to mine, I can easily overlook this opposition; and (...) I may still find some entertainment in your conversation, even upon those very subjects."

INTP

David Keirsey

"It is to the Rational temperament that humanity owes its Directors, Inventors and Masterminds."

(Keirsey identifies himself as INTP.)
 

INTP

Abraham Lincoln

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."

INTP

Thomas Jefferson

"Be polite towards all but intimate with  few."
 

INTP

Paul Graham

"Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let yourself be defined by what they tell you to do."

INTP

Xenophanes

"If an act is blameworthy it is blameworthy no matter who the perpetrayor; god or man."

INTP

Milton Friedman

"To really understand something you've got to reduce it to its principles."

INTP

N. Gregory Mankiw

"In my view, it is best to consider all knowledge as tentative. The best scholars maintain an open-mindedness and humility about even their own core beliefs."

INTP

Max Weber

"The modern world is but a convergence of factors so unlikely to occur as to be practically an accident."
 

INTP

Dogen Zenji

"A zen master's life is one continuous mistake."

INTP

James Madison

"If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason."

INTP

Marie Curie

"Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas (...) There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth."
 

ENTP

Socrates

"I have examined your position and determined your utterances to be mere brain-farts. But even so, supposing you should try to think afresh, your thoughts will be better as a consequence of today's scrutiny."

(Keirsey identifies Socrates as INTP.)
 

ENTP

Origen

(Jung identified Origen as an Extrovert.)

ENTP

Niccolo Macchiavelli

"Man must wear one face in public and another in private."

ENTP

Voltaire

[On his deathbed, asked by a priest to renounce the Devil:]

"Now now, my good man. This is no time for making enemies."

ENTP

David Hume

"I have written on all sorts of subjects and yet I have no enemies, except indeed all the Whigs, all the Tories and all the Christians."

[D.F. Norton: "In three years he read most of the celebrated books and poems in Latin, French and Englsh and he also learned Italian. Thus, although Hume's views are often supposed to result from his engagement with only one or two philosophers the breadth of his reading suggests [otherwise]."]

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
 

ENTP

A. de Tocqueville

"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies."
 

ENTP

Francis Galton

ENTP

Oscar Wilde

"To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity."

ENTP

George Bernard Shaw

"Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."

ENTP

Bertrand Russell

Russell: "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."

Thomas Sowell: "A striking example of the wide mood swings to which some intellectuals have been subject [is] Bertrand Russell ... Whether an advocate for [preemptive nuclear war] or as a radical pacifist before and afterwards, Bertrand Russel sought sweeping and dramatic 'solutions'."

The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell
 

ENTP

Richard Feynman

"On the many occasions when I play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics."

ENTP

Michel Foucault

"The work of an intellectual is to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions."
 

ENTP

Bill Hicks

"The worst kind of non-smokers are the ones that come up to you and cough. That's pretty fucking cruel isn't it? Do you go up to cripples and dance too?"

ENTP

Slavoj Zizek

"The only measure of true love is: You can insult the other."

ENTP

Daniel Dennett

"The eye contains a big flaw: The retina is inside-out. No designer would make such a clumsy arrangement, and this is just one of the hundreds of accidents frozen in evolutionary history that confirm the mindlessness of the process."
 

ENTP

Steven Pinker

"People get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections."

ENTP

Matt Ridley

"A true scientist is bored by knowledge. It is the assault on ignorance that motivates him. [...] The forest is more interesting than the clearing."
 

ENTP

Luc Ferry

"French philosophy is nothing but the hyperbolic repetition of German philosophy."

ENTP

Thomas More

"Ask a woman's advice, and whatever she advises, do the very reverse and you're sure to be wise."
 

ENTP

M. Maimonides

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision. (...) Teach thy tongue to say 'I do not know,' and thou shalt progress."

ENTP

Brad Warner

"You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game."
 

ENTP

Karl R. Popper

"[I attach importance to] having received a letter from a man who takes philosophy (or anything) seriously. I thought the breed had died out."
 

ENTP

Alexander III

"If I was not Alexander the great king, I would be a philosopher."  

ENTP

Benjamin Franklin

 "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner."

ENTP

Barack Obama

 "[As an adolescent I was] arguing all the time, usually about me failing to abide by (...) petty and arbitrary rules. I found that I could generally win these arguments."

 (Keirsey defines Obama as INTJ.)

Why Obama is ENTP

ENTP

Bill Maher

"We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels and free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep and conformists."

ENTP

Gretchen Rubin

"Of these 40 perspectives, all are equally 'true'."

(Rubin identifies herself as ENTJ.)

ENTP

Winston Churchill

[When a voter said that he would rather vote for the Devil than for Churchill:]

"I understand. But in case your friend is not running may I count on your support?"

 (Keirsey defines Churchill as ESTP.
This is probably because Keirsey's system does not engage in function analysis but rather looks at S/N in terms of a short term/ long term dichotomy. This, however, would make a great many people who are ENP by Jungian standards into ESPs. It seems to us that this view of personality is not actually about personality but about functional roles in society.)
 

ENTP

John Stuart Mill

"If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind."

ENTP

Frederic Bastiat

"We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important for them to know; and we may be certain that they are determined to remain invincibly ignorant."
 

ENTP

Thomas Sowell

"One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans — anything except reason."

[Myron Weiner: "One finishes reading Sowell awed with his ability to bring together so much material in such a readable fashion."]

Intellectuals and Society
 

ENTP

Marilyn Vos Savant

"Be able to defend your arguments in a rational way. Otherwise, all you have is an opinion."

(Savant identifies herself as ENTP.)

ENTP

Ken Miller

"The scientific argument advanced for Intelligent Design at the Dover trial, those arguments collapsed, scientifically and intellectually."
 

 ENTP

Alan Dershowitz

"I like ambiguity, I like conflict, I like uncertainty."

 ENTP

Fernand Braudel

 ENTP

Nagasena

ENTP

Johan Nordberg

"The entrepreneur is the hero of our world. We do not really need the Frodos, the Luke Skywalkers, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayers."

 ENTP

Arianna Huffington

"Parody and satire is an important way to capture the imagination."
 

ENTP

Camille Paglia

"All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!"
 

INTJ

Heraclitus

"Most men have sated themselves like cattle (...) Greater deaths are allotted greater destinies."

INTJ

Tertullian

"Certum est, quia impossibile."

("It is impossible and therefore certain.")

(Jung identified Tertullian as an Introvert.)

INTJ

J.C.F. von Schiller

"All things must; man is the only creature that wills."

INTJ

Karl Marx

"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

INTJ

F. W. Nietzsche

"What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness."

INTJ

Martin Heidegger

"The future of the West depends upon the proper understanding of metaphysics as presented in my thought."

INTJ

Jean-Paul Sartre

"As far as men are concerned, it is not what they are that interests me but what they can become."
 

INTJ

Ayn Rand

"While animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself."

INTJ

Susan Sontag

"It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared, but suffering that degrades." 

INTJ

Christopher Hitchens

"Those who are determined to be 'offended' will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt."

INTJ

G.W. Nishijima

"When you practice Zen, you extend yourself throughout the universe."
 

INTJ

Alcibiades

"If we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled ourselves."

INTJ

Hillary Clinton

"Unthinking emotion is pitiful to me."

(Clinton identifies herself as INTJ.)

(Keirsey identifies Clinton as ESTJ.)
 

INTJ

J. Maynard Keynes

"The country does not need an iron-cast economic doctrine as long as it has me."

[Roy Harod: "Keynes held forth on a great range of topics, one some of which he was thoroughly an expert, but on others of which he may have derived his views from the few pages of a book at which he had happened to glance. The air of authority was the same in both cases."]

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
 

ENTJ

Aristotle

"Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions."
 

ENTJ

M.T. Cicero

ENTJ

G. Julius Caesar

"I would rather be first in a village than second in Rome."

ENTJ

Muhammad

"Philosophy is a stray camel to the faithful. Grab hold of it wherever you come across it."

ENTJ

Averroes

ENTJ

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon: "Ambition is never in a greater hurry than I. It merely keeps pace with my way of thinking."

Napoleon: "In victory you deserve champagne. In defeat you need it."

[After his victory at Marengo, the starved Napoleon called for a meal. Durand, the head chef was desperate.The army's foragers had turned up a meagre booty, lacking both cream and wine with which to prepare the chicken. Durand had to make due with diluted Cognac for taste.

Later in the campaign, Durand improved the dish using cream and white wine to replace the bristly Cognac. For this, Napoleon scolded him: If diluded cognac was what brought him victory at Marengo, who was Durand to change it?]

Military Maxims

ENTJ

Sigmund Freud

Freud: "Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom entails responsibility and most people are frightened of responsibility."

Anthony Storr: "[Freud was] obsessed with control and order."

Anthony Storr: "[Freud's collection of Antique statues] crowd the shelves so closely that not one can be appreciated as an aesthetic object in its own right. This display is not that of a connoisseur but that of a ... collector whose interest is in accumulation rather than beauty."

Jung: "[In my estimation] I would think he [Freud] was extraverted."

The editors of PhilsopherTypes: "The Pleasure Principle is the clear hallmark of an extroverted intellect."

The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud
 

ENTJ

H.J. Eysenck

"If it cannot be measured, it does not exist."
 

ENTJ

Richard Wagner

"I write music with an exclamation mark!"

(Nietzsche: "He writes music that perspirates.")

ENTJ

Margaret Thatcher

"To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best."

ENTJ

Galen

"Pain is useless to the pained."

ENTJ

Benazir Bhutto

"The difference between somebody who succeeds and somebody who fails is the ability to absorb a setback. Because ... there will be setbacks, and there are those who give up, and those who ... go on."
 

ENTJ

Theodore Millon
 

ENFP

Mark Twain

"I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up."
 

ENFP

Richard Wiseman

"While Freud considered himself a scientist, many of his ideas are in fact completely untesticle."

ENFP

Bill Clinton

"A lot of presidential memoirs, they say, are dull and self-serving. I hope mine is interesting and self-serving."

(David Keirsey identifies Clinton as ESFP. This is probably because Keirsey's system does not engage in function analysis but rather looks at S/N in terms of a short term/ long term dichotomy. This, however, would make a great many people who are ENP by Jungian standards into ESPs. It seems to us that this view of personality is not actually about personality but about functional roles in society.)
 

ENFP

Andy Rooney

"If you say something true or serious or important [the audience] doesn't nod, so you have no way to know whether you're reaching someone. (...) Humor evokes laughter, so you know you have touched an audience and succeeded in what you're doing."
 

ENFP

Hunter S. Thompson

"I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right."

ENFP

Neil Strauss

"[I never really had] a plan. I just try not to follow any rules. I just follow whatever I’m interested in."

ENFP

Katie Couric

"I knew I had to be a journalist because I’m deeply curious about the world (...) and I saw that when properly practiced, it’s a craft that can help galvanize an often complacent citizenry, and make a difference."

ENFP

Aelius Aristides

INFP

Augustine
 

INFP

M. de Cervantes

"Which would you rather have: Foolish sanity or wise madness?"
 

INFP

John Milton

INFP

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"It is he who erects fences around his property who destroys civilization; the natural civilization of Man."
 

INFP

William Blake

INFP

Søren Kierkegaard

"If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe."

INFP

Virginia Woolf

"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery - always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud. And why? What's this passion for?"

INFP

Albert Camus

"We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... Inside ourselves."

INFP

Bjorn Lomborg

"I’m an old Greenpeace guy, and my first reaction was exactly the same thing as I see most other people reacting to what I say."

INFP

Bill Bryson

 

INFP

Hans Christian Andersen

"If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and - pity me."

INFP

John Kerry

"[Never] start a war ... the USA should only go to war because we have to. And if you live by that guidance, you'll never have veterans throwing away their medals or standing up in protest."

INFP

William Shakespeare

INFP

David Lynch

"I didn't watch much TV as a kid and I don't watch it now. I don't find anything beautiful or unique to the medium, and the only thing you can do on TV that you can't do in film is make a continuing story - which is so cool!"
 

INFP

Homer

"The blade itself incites to violence."

ENFJ

Erich Fromm

"All men are in need of help and depend on one another. Human solidarity is the necessary condition for the unfolding of any one individual."
 

ENFJ

Hannah Arendt

ENFJ

Joseph Biden

"[A fundamental] part of being a public servant [is] absorbing the anger of people who don't know where to turn."

ENFJ

Michael Moore

"If you leave the theatre depressed, you are paralysed by the despair. I don’t want you to go have a beer and go, 'Let’s just forget about that' and 'So the world sucks.' I want you to leave the theatre angry, and feeling like you’d better do something. I am pushing your citizen button."

ENFJ

Tony Blair

"I fear my own conscience on Africa.  I fear the judgment of future generations, where history properly calculates the gravity of the suffering. (...) I feel that judgment of the future alongside the now. It gives me urgency. It fills me with determination."
 

ENFJ

John Paul II

"I hope to have communion with the people, that is the most important thing."

ENFJ

Pericles

"Men can endure to hear others praised only so long as they can severally persuade themselves of their own ability to equal the actions recounted."

ENFJ

Carl Rogers

"If I can create the proper climate, the proper relationship, the proper conditions, a process of therapeutic movement will almost inevitably occur in my client."
 

INFJ

Plato

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
 

INFJ

Desiderius Erasmus

"In the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is king."
 

INFJ

Plotinus

"We possess Beauty when we are true to our own being; knowing ourselves, we are beautiful; in self-ignorance, we are ugly."
 

INFJ

Thomas Aquinas

"Hold firmly that our faith is compatible with that of the ancients. Deny this, and you dissolve the unity of the Church."

INFJ

Dante Alighieri

"Consider your origins; you were not meant to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge [...] Follow your own star."

INFJ

J.W. von Goethe

"I reject the notion of a nationalist education for to be educated a man must know the culture of every nation."

INFJ

G.W.F. Hegel

"Dialectics gives expression to a law which is felt in all grades of consciousness and in general experience. Everything that surrounds us may be viewed as an instance of dialectic."

INFJ

Arthur Schopenhauer

"It is only a man's own thoughts that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger."
 

INFJ

C.G. Jung

"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."

(Jung identified himself as INTP.)

Freud: "I have always felt that there is something about my personality ... that people find ... repelling whereas all hearts open to you."
- Freud/Jung Letters, 82

The Red Book
 

INFJ

L. Wittgenstein

"One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I'."
 

INFJ

Simone de Beauvoir

"It is the fate of women always to be secondary. To be the second sex."

INFJ

Noam Chomsky

"Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way. "

INFJ

Irvin D. Yalom

"We enter this world alone, die alone and in between we all have to face the prospect of inevitable death."
 

INFJ

A.N. Whitehead

"An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words."

INFJ

Epictetus

"[Do not get too attached to life] for it is like a sailor's leave on the shore and at any time, the captain may sound the horn, calling you back to eternal darkness."

INFJ

Ron Paul

"We have allowed our nation to deteriorate. The founders would be ashamed of us for what we are putting up with."

INFJ

Dainin Kataghiri

"As long as you see things from a human perspective it is hard to realize what is going on. That is why you must see things from a universal perspective."
 

INFJ

Marilyn Manson

"Part of me is afraid to get close to people because I'm afraid that they're going to leave."

INFJ

Marcus Aurelius

"[You should] constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul."
 

INFJ

F. Dostoevsky

"I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind." 

ESTJ

Phil McGraw

"Awareness without action is worthless. Sometimes you make the right decision, sometimes you make the decision right."
 

ESTJ

Michelle Obama

"Role modeling what good families should look like [is important]. And my view is that if you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House."

ESTJ

Condoleezza Rice

"When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill."

ESTJ

Curly Martin

ESTJ

Judith Sheindlin

"The main message of my show is that people have to be responsible for their own actions."
 

ISTJ

Thomas Hobbes

"During times where men live without a great power to keep them all in awe, they are in a war of every man, against every man."
 

ISTJ

Edward Gibbon

"[When my father called off my engagement] I sighed as a lover, obeyed as a son."
 

ISTJ

Paul the Apostle

ISTJ

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"I feel this obligation (...) I think that I can't just lie around (...) and enjoy a life of Western progress and at the same time keep quiet about what is not right."

ISTJ

George Washington

"Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected."

 ISTJ

Richard Nixon

"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."

ESFJ

Daniel Goleman
 

ISFJ

Xenophon

"For the good man, there is nothing better than owning an estate and tending to it, properly."
 

ISFJ

Shunryu Suzuki

"Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine."
 

ISFJ

Robert E. Lee

"Duty is the most sublime word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less."

ISFJ

Thich Nhat Hanh

"The son is an extension of the father."
 

ESTP

Stephen Covey

"Let natural consequences teach responsible behavior."

ESTP

Anton S. LaVey

"Do what you want as long as it's paying off for you."

 The Satanic Bible

ESTP

Ole Nydahl

"Experiencing Buddhist Enlightenment is like driving a 400 horsepower Audi in your mind."

ESTP

Dale Carnegie

"Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success."

ESTP

Silvio Berlusconi

"I will use the same techniques I used to become personally wealthy in order to make Italy as a country wealthy."
 

ESTP

Donald Trump

"I don't make deals for the money. I do it to do it."

ESTP

Steve Pavlina

"Act boldly ... if you keep adding fuel to your desire, you will reach the point of knowing that you'll never quit, and ultimate success will be nothing more than a matter of time."

(Pavlina identifies himself as ENTJ.)

 Personal Development for Smart People
 

ISTP

Diogenes

"I saw a woman praying in front of an alter with her ass in the air and said to her: Look out; Zeus is behind you, too."
 

ISTP

Dalai Lama XIV

"As a child I liked to disassemble things; radios, clocks, and the like. I took them apart to see how they worked."
 

ISTP

Miyamoto Musashi

"If you make your opponent flinch, you have already won."

The Book of Five Rings
 

ISTP

Erwin Rommel

"You cannot permit unique opportunities to slip by for the sake of trifles."

 The Rommel Papers

ESFP

Anthony Robbins

"Live with passion!"

ISFP

Princess Diana

"I lead from the heart, not the head."

(Diana identified herself as INFP.)
 

ISFP

Nero

"Qualis artifex pereo!"

(What a great maker that dies with me!)