Philosophy Quotes

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

~ Henri Bergson

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

~ Frédéric Bastiat

Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.

~ Emil M. Cioran

Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing just because it's dangerous. We're more concerned with not looking scared than with judging right.

~ Philip Pullman

Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive.

~ Simone De Beauvoir

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

~ René Descartes

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

~ Isaac Asimov

Faith in faith' he answered himself. 'It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief.

~ Alfred Bester

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.

~ Rebecca Solnit

To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.

~ Alexandre Dumas

A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.

~ Niccolò Machiavelli

If you can't fight and you can't flee, flow.

~ Robert Elias

Each star is a mirror reflecting the truth inside you.

~ Aberjhani

All men by nature desire knowledge.

~ Aristotle

Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

...an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.

~ Robert Anton Wilson

To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone.

~ Suzanne Gordon

I would prefer a sword to fight duel, but a pen to plan a war.

~ Robert Thier

If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.

~ W. Somerset Maugham

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

~ Baruch Spinoza

it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Things are not always what they seem, the first appearance deceives many, the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.

~ Phaedrus

...only in the surrender of the light could the darkness prevail.

~ David Eddings

All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist.

~ Nicole Krauss

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?

~ Søren Kierkegaard

There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.

~ Thomas Jefferson

No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.

~ Virginia Woolf

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

~ John Stuart Mill

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

~ David Hume

All the world's a stage.

~ William Shakespeare

To be evenminded is the greatest virtue.Wisdom is to speakthe truth and actin keeping with its nature.

~ Heraclitus

...when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.

~ Robert Anton Wilson

I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore.

~ Criss Jami

There isnt always an explanation for everything.

~ Ernest Hemingway

The only thing standing between you and your dreams is ... reluctance.

~ Carroll Bryant

Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil - which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.

~ Richard Feynman