Philosophy Quotes

I have gone around observing your activities from the outside. Because of this I have also been able to see things to which you have been blind... Every morning you have gone to work, but you have never been fully awake. Of course, you have seen the sun and the moon, the stars in the sky, and everything that moves, but you haven't really seen it at all. It is different for the Joker, because he was put into this world with a flaw: He sees too clearly and too much.

~ Jostein Gaarder

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

When you are lonely for a while don't get restless, if you had born alone, you are going to die alone then for sometime you can certainly live alone.

~ Amit Kalantri

[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

~ Daniel Quinn

It's a philosophical minefield!Cabal had a brief mental image of Aristotle walking halfway across an open field before unexpectedly disappearing in a fireball. Descartes and Nietzsche looked on appalled. He pulled himself together.

~ Jonathan L. Howard

We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.

~ Albert Camus

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

~ Diogenes Of Sinope

I am a citizen of the world.

~ Diogenes Of Sinope

He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Skepticism is thus a resting-place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make survey of the region in which it finds itself, so that for the future it may be able to choose its path with more certainty. But it is no dwelling-place for permanent settlement. Such can be obtained only through perfect certainty in our knowledge, alike of the objects themselves and of the limits within which all our knowledge of objects is enclosed.

~ Immanuel Kant

My view is that if your philosophy is not unsettled daily then you are blind to all the universe has to offer.

~ Neil Degrasse Tyson

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it.

~ Albert Camus

You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

~ Oscar Wilde

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.

~ Jasper Fforde

Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.

~ Ray Bradbury

By what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

It's easy to hate and point out everything that is wrong with the world, it is the hardest and most important work in one's life to free oneself from the bonds of fear and attachment.

~ Noah Levine

Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily.

~ François De La Rochefoucauld

I am dead because I lack desire,I lack desire because I think I possess.I think I possess because I do not try to give.In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing:Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become;In desiring to become, you begin to live.

~ René Daumal

But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.

~ José Martí

Patience is the only way you can endure the gray periods.

~ Teri Hatcher

All things fade and quickly turn to myth.

~ Marcus Aurelius

Life is a bitter sweet journey my friend, a bitter sweet journey.

~ Luellen Hoffman

If just one of [those people] experiences life as a crazy adventure--and I mean that he, or she, experiences this every single day... Then he or she is a joker in a pack of cards.

~ Jostein Gaarder

the serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

~ Francis Bacon

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

~ John Stuart Mill

Philosophy and science have not always been friendly toward the idea of God, the reason being they are dedicated to the task of accounting for things and are impatient with anything that refuses to give an account of itself. The philosopher and the scientist will admit that there is much that they do not know; but that is quite another thing from admitting there is something which they can never know, which indeed they have no technique for discovering.

~ A.w. Tozer

Izzi: Remember Moses Morales? Tom Verde: Who? Izzi: The Mayan guide I told you about. Tom Verde: From your trip. Izzi: Yeah. The last night I was with him, he told me about his father, who had died. Well Moses wouldn't believe it. Tom Verde: Izzi... Izzi: [embraces Tom] No, no. Listen, listen. He said that if they dug his father's body up, it would be gone. They planted a seed over his grave. The seed became a tree. Moses said his father became a part of that tree. He grew into the wood, into the bloom. And when a sparrow ate the tree's fruit, his father flew with the birds. He said... death was his father's road to awe. That's what he called it. The road to awe. Now, I've been trying to write the last chapter and I haven't been able to get that out of my head! Tom Verde: Why are you telling me this? Izzi: I'm not afraid anymore, Tommy.

~ Darren Aronofsky

No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity

~ Seneca

... every moment of our life has a purpose, that every action of ours, no matter how dull or routine or trivial it may seem in itself, has a dignity and a worth beyond human understanding... For it means that no moment can be wasted, no opportunity missed, since each has a purpose in man’s life, each has a purpose in God’s plan. Think of your day, today or yesterday. Think of the work you did, the people you met, moment by moment. What did it mean to you- and might it have meant for God? Is the question too simple to answer, or are we just afraid to ask it for fear of the answer we must give?

~ Walter J. Ciszek

If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably right—it would make no great difference. But if you ALL found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed.

~ Daniel Quinn

I am what some would say 'holy, and wholly other than you.' The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn't much, and then call that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I'm not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think.

~ William Paul Young

The philosopher whose dealings are with divine order himself acquires the characteristics of order and divinity.

~ Plato

Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea — whether it’s about politics or sports — what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology — rigid and unyielding.

~ Dan Ariely

What a lover’s heart knows let no man’s brain dispute.

~ Aberjhani

The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

~ Karl R. Popper

Life's managed, not cured.

~ Phillip C. Mcgraw

Reality is harsh. It can be cruel and ugly. Yet no matter how much we grieve over our environment and circumstances nothing will change. What is important is not to be defeated, to forge ahead bravely. If we do this, a path will open before us.

~ Daisaku Ikeda