Philosophical Quotes

There is much that is strange, but nothing that surpasses man in strangeness

~ Sophocles

Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.

~ Patrick O'brian

The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- A Clockwork Orange Resucked intro to first full American version 1986

~ Anthony Burgess

But perhaps that's why we take snaps...to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness.

~ Jo Nesbø

I shall try to persuade first the Rulers and soldiers, and then the rest of the community, that the upbringing and education we have given them was all something that happened to them only in a dream. In reality they were fashioned and reared, and their arms and equipment manufactured, in the depths of the earth, and Earth herself, their mother, brought them up, when they were complete, into the light of day; so now they must think of the land in which they live as their mother and protect her if she is attacked, while their fellow citizens they must regard as brothers born of the same mother earth…. That is the story. Do you know of any way of making them believe it?” “Not in the first generation,” he said, “but you might succeed with the second, and later generations.

~ Plato

I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them -- that is, I wish to destroy that by which I live.

~ Leo Tolstoy

I think I made a better boy than I do a man, I admitted ruefully to the wolf. Why not wait until you've been at it a bit longer and then decide? he suggested.

~ Robin Hobb

Are you dying?Cato lit his cigarette. It's not acute, perhaps, but we're all dying, Harry.

~ Jo Nesbø

Well, it is in fact possible to put things behind you, Rakel. The art of dealing with ghosts is to dare to look at them long and hard until you know that is what they are. Ghosts. Lifeless, powerless ghosts.

~ Jo Nesbø

You have the ability to find all the answers--if you let yourself do so.

~ Heather Graham

Evil is done by the living.

~ Heather Graham

Evil doesn't just go away.

~ Heather Graham

It meant leading my meta-life. Meta-life is the opposite of living in the moment. It's the syndrome of simultaneously having an experience and being an observer commenting on and questioning the experience. By observing something, you change it, sometimes for the better, but in my experience, usually for the worse. You know youre in the meta-life when you're critiquing an experience while you're having it (This is fun but it would be more fun if . . .), trying to talk yourself into happiness because you should feel it (It's a beautiful day, and all I really need to be happy are fresh air and sunshine), or worrying that youre not getting any closer to the Big Important Things (Sure, this is a great date, but what are the odds this guy would ever marry someone like me?).

~ Holly Shumas

If he ever changes his stance on something, it's because he's received new information.

~ Heather Graham

Flame is the lamp, rest is borrowed.

~ R.n. Prasher

Some people remember the sixties better than others do. Some weren't even there, some who were there were not really there, and some who were not really there were really there.

~ Tom Hays

That's a stupid question,' said Malachi. 'Because he didn't warn him. He didn't warn anyone.''No, it's a philosophical question,' Kearns corrected him. 'Which makes it useless, not stupid.

~ Rick Yancey

If nature has composed the human body so that in its proportions the seperate individual elements answer to the total form, then the Ancients seem to have had reason to decide that bringing their creations to full completion likewise required a correspondence bewteen the measure of individual elements and the appearance of the work as a whole.

~ Vitruvius

Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o'er cast, They always must be with us, or we die.

~ John Keats

Man is Nature's most wonderful creature. Torturing him, crushing him, murdering him for his beliefs and ideas is more than a violation of human rights-it is a crime against all humanity.

~ Armando Valladares

Until we realize that things might not be we cannot realize that things are.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Irony is the kid who steals music and is stolen by the music.

~ Medvgno

Doctrines are meant to serve man, not the other way around.

~ Amin Maalouf

Heated is what you get when you rub faith and instinct together.

~ Cornelia Connie Dedona

Good apprentices know that they are in the process of becoming masters and that as responsible artisans they must seek to improve upon the knowledge entrusted to them and go further.

~ William Coperthwaite

One species on the planet, and one species only, has reached the point of being able to have an impact on the evolutionary fortunes of all other species and upon the functioning of all ecosystems. We also have, in a way that is not true for any other species, a relationship to the planet as a whole and to the future. We live with all life.

~ Walter Truett Anderson

It's best to locate the mind first before launching the 'missiles of contention'.

~ Gasmaskman

Oliver, success is usually a feeling of mere relief, where failure is pain. Happiness, you see, lies in neither, but in sticking to a daily ritual and becoming absorbed in something useful. When the war is over, even the greatest warriors do not exult. They go back to their garden or kitchen or library -- or school -- and resume life.(as said by Mrs. Pearson)

~ Adam Gopnik

When we merely follow another, we take a potentially creative mind out of service-our own.

~ William Coperthwaite

One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it

~ Albert Camus

Only by knowing yourself can you live honestly and find your own path.

~ Gregory Bassham

.....we find ourselves inhabitants of the last few living cells of a dying god

~ Billy Kazee

So many things become beautiful when you really look

~ Lauren Oliver

Then sense. Use your sense. Not all of us are born for greatness, but all of us have sense. Make use of it. Think. Think long and well.

~ Richard Llewellyn

It's in out-of-the-ordinary situations - especially situations of challenge or adversity - that the most important differences between people shine through.

~ Gregory Bassham

If we forget the past, individually or as a culture, we lose knowledge that has already been gained, and we lose valuable tools by which our knowledge may grow.

~ S. Joel Garver

Truly, the old maid is a most useful person, one of the reserve forces of the community. They talk of the superfluous woman, but what would the poor superfluous man do without her kindly presence?

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think...and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment, it's frightful, if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence. Thoughts are born at the back of me, like sudden giddiness, I feel them being born behind my head...if I yield, they're going to come round in front of me, between my eyes, and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

At the heart of all of mankind’s achievements is imagination.

~ R. L. Matthies

Yet if all reality is subjective, all certitude is impossible.

~ Robin Paul Wood