Famous Philosophers’ Pick-Up Lines

Immanuel Kant: “If loving you is wrong, babe… then I have a moral duty not to love you because loving you is an ethical decision that cannot be universalized.”

Baruch Spinoza: “What’s your sign? My sign is ALL of the signs because God is nature and we are but facets of His infinitude.”

René Descartes: “I would rearrange the stars for you, babe… And, technically-speaking, it is NOT IMPOSSIBLE for me to rearrange the stars, because everything that is external to me is subject to skepticism and, as such, the only thing I can truly be certain of is my own, rational existence.”

John Locke: “I have observed the stars and have come to the conclusion that I can’t rearrange them.”

David Hume: “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven? And, if it did, will your pain inherently engender sentimentality in me because all our rational thoughts are subordinate to the strength of our own self-same passions? Spoiler alert… the answer is yes!”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “You and me babe ain’t nothing but mammals… free and untethered from the paternalistic chains of society.”

Thomas Hobbes: “You and me babe ain’t nothing but mammals… filthy, filthy mammals who are naught but slaves to their unending bestial desires for wealth and land and POWER.”

Ayn Rand: “Babe, I’m gonna give you a night you’ll never forget… But, in return, I expect you to give me something of equal value because altruism is both illogical AND the world’s greatest evil (and so is government regulation).”

Søren Kierkegaard: “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this? And why did you choose here, specifically? Did the burden of choice fill you with dread? Did it fill you with anxiety? And how can there be any moral truisms when all ethical decisions are determined from the infinitude of our fallible choices? Anyhoo… wanna smush?”

Mary Wollstonecraft: “I better get a library card, because I am checking you out! Also because the library is a great source of knowledge, which, as of yet, has been restricted to women by the patriarchy in order to keep them in a self-perpetuating cycle of subjugation!”

Jean-Paul Sartre: “Hey babe, what are you doing for the rest of your life? Seriously. What are you doing? See, unlike a knife or a toaster, humans were not built for any one function, so it’s up to us to determine the purpose of our own existence… Make the decision! Take the leap! What are you doing for the rest of your life!!!”

Jeremy Bentham: “Wanna maximize each other’s overall happiness, babe?”

John Stuart Mill: “Wanna maximize each other’s overall happiness through standardized, overarching RULE-BASED UTILITARIANISM which is infinitely better than the swinish, hedonistic utilitarianism of my cowardly predecessor, Jeremy Bentham… babe?”

Aristotle: “Can I buy you a drink? (But only if buying you a drink will contribute in some constitutive way to my overall eudaimonia.)”

Plato: “Can I buy you a drink? (Not the drink, mind you. But a singular, specific drink that is but a representation of the perfect Form of drinks, like a shadow upon the wall of a cavern.)”

Socrates: “Why should I buy you a drink?”

Niccolò Machiavelli: “Can you buy me a drink?”

Karl Marx: “No one should have to buy anyone drinks. And the only way to achieve this is through revolution.”

G.W.F. Hegel: “I could really see a guy like me with a girl like you. And, more importantly, I could really see a guy like me seeing myself through the relational experience of a girl like you seeing me, amiright???”

Friedrich Nietzsche: “I didn’t know that angels could fly so low. Or that angels even existed anymore now that God is dead… amiright???”

Simone de Beauvoir: “Throughout the history of bad one-liners, the grand majority of cheesy pick-up lines have been written by men. Thus, we must cast off the blinders of passivity and create a world where cheesy pick-up lines are not obligated to conform to the limiting pick-up line standards of the past. That is the surest (and only) path to true pick-up line equality.”

Arthur Schopenhauer: “Life is nothing but a meaningless fluctuation between pain and boredom. And we are but worms. And our only chance of freedom is to embrace the dark nothingness that surrounds us. And to cast off the burdensome yoke of individualism. And to embrace the void. And to become one with the unyielding Will of the universe. Anyhoo… wanna smush?”