Philosophy Quotes

Whenever I think of something but can't think of what it was I was thinking of, I can't stop thinking until I think I'm thinking of it again. I think I think too much.

~ Criss Jami

And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task.

~ Jostein Gaarder

To assess the quality of thoughts of people, don't listen to their words, but watch their actions.

~ Amit Kalantri

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

~ Immanuel Kant

And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world.

~ Will Durant

He who is more mindful of one, loses the love and the faith of both.

~ Kahlil Gibran

You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. … You are captives—and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?—your captivity and the captivity of the world.

~ Daniel Quinn

I knew I was alone in a way that no earthling has ever been before.

~ Michael Collins

The stronger a culture, the less it fears the radical fringe. The more paranoid and precarious a culture, the less tolerance it offers.

~ Joel Salatin

Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.

~ Aristotle

An age cannot bind itself and ordain to put the succeeding one into such a condition that it cannot extend its (at best very occasional) knowledge , purify itself of errors, and progress in general enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature, the proper destination of which lies precisely in this progress and the descendants would be fully justified in rejecting those decrees as having been made in an unwarranted and malicious manner..

~ Immanuel Kant

Were we incapable of empathy – of putting ourselves in the position of others and seeing that their suffering is like our own – then ethical reasoning would lead nowhere. If emotion without reason is blind, then reason without emotion is impotent.

~ Peter Singer

Il n'y a de réalité que dans l'action.(There is no reality except in action.)

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it.

~ Lao Tzu

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Imagine others complexly.

~ John Green

If you wake up tired, you’ve been chasing dreams. If you go to bed tired, your making your dreams happen.

~ Benny Bellamacina

Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Change is not always growth, but growth is often rooted in change.Drizzt Do'Urden

~ R.a. Salvatore

Nothing is as it seems, but something is everything it is made out to be.

~ Carroll Bryant

How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

~ Plato

The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool.

~ Marquis De Sade

A man leaves his great house because he's boredWith life at home, and suddenly returns,Finding himself no happier abroad.He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,And yawns before he's put his foot inside,Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,Or even rushes back to town again.So each man flies from himself (vain hope, becauseIt clings to him the more closely against his will)And hates himself because he is sick in mindAnd does not know the cause of his disease.

~ Titus Lucretius Carus

My heart knows what my mind only think it knows.

~ Noah Benshea

To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room. … Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life…

~ William S. Burroughs

Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.

~ Lin Yutang

A photograph shouldn't be just a picture, it should be a philosophy.

~ Amit Kalantri

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.

~ R. Dawkins

Pactum serva - Keep the faith

~ Horace

No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.

~ Anatole France

Only by examining our personal biases can we truly grow as artists, only by cultivating empathy can we truly grow as people.

~ Jen Knox

Don't fear the gods,Don't worry about death;What is good is easy to get, andWhat is terrible is easy to endure.

~ Epicurus

We can't avoid reasoning, we can only avoid doing it well.

~ Peter Kreeft

The love of money is the root of all evil, therefore selfishness must be the seed.

~ M.d. Birmingham

Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere.

~ Søren Kierkegaard

Know you not that a good man does nothing for appearance sake, but for the sake of having done right?

~ Epictetus

You can't just skip the boring parts.Of course I can skip the boring parts.How do you know they're boring if you don't read them?I can tell.Then you can't say you've read the whole play.I think I can live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don't read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.Who knows? she said. Maybe you can't.

~ Gary D. Schmidt

And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!

~ Charles Baudelaire

The life of the enemy . Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche