Philosophy Quotes

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.

~ Diogenes Of Sinope

If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not add to his store of money, but subtract from his desires.

~ Epicurus

I drink cup of sunlight every morning to brighten myself.

~ Debasish Mridha

Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility.

~ Baruch Spinoza

If you can convince people that freedom is injustice, they will then believe that slavery is freedom.

~ Stefan Molyneux

There is no key to open the heart of another - except curiosity.

~ Stefan Molyneux

It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher.

~ Charles Sanders Peirce

When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is 'being offended'.

~ Stefan Molyneux

We are supposed to call poison medicine and we wonder why we're always sick.

~ Stefan Molyneux

The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.

~ David Mitchell

This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death.

~ René Daumal

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.

~ Kakuzō Okakura

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

~ Thomas Aquinas

A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.

~ H.l. Mencken

Words are the clothes thoughts wear.

~ Samuel Beckett

Call no man happy until he is dead.

~ Solon

Philosophers can debate the meaning of life, but you need a Lord who can declare the meaning of life.

~ Max Lucado

Bring the mind into sharp focus and make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere. The mind must be emancipated from old habits, prejudices, restrictive thought processes and even ordinary thought itself.

~ Bruce Lee

Is it better to go with the flow or let the flow go?

~ Aidan Chambers

let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.

~ Plato

To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures.

~ Frank Herbert

Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Oh, why does compassion weaken us?'It doesn't, really ... Somewhere where it all balances out - don't the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live? - if we could go there, you could see it doesn't. It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn't have a clue that it's a tree; it's the beginning of the wall round the world, to him.

~ Robin Mckinley

I didn't want to do it,' Kiala said. 'The universe just kind of conspired to force me to make a fool of myself. It does that quite a lot, actually.

~ Graham Parke

The ethos of redemption is realied in self-mastery, by means of temperance, that is, continence of desires.

~ John Paul Ii

Further, an excess of legislation defeats its own ends. It makes the whole population criminals, and turns them all into police and police spies. The moral health of such a people is ruined for ever; only revolution can save it.

~ Aleister Crowley

A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist.

~ Ayn Rand

Whether we like it or not, modern ways are going to alter and in part destroy traditional customs and values.

~ Werner Heisenberg

If you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneron… my answer is “How should I know?”… I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteries… I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph.

~ Martin Gardner

Conformity to the present is invisibility to the future.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Where do one's fears come from? Where do they shape themselves? Where do they hide before coming out into the open?

~ Agatha Christie

Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding,” Joseph exclaimed. “If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn’t there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?”The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: “There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun.

~ Hermann Hesse

If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief.

~ Pier Paolo Pasolini

Violence begins with the fork.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

We...sin not because we want what is evil, but because we want what isn't good enough.

~ Scott Hahn

We follow the ways of wolves, the habits of tigers: or, rather we are worse than they. To them nature has assigned that they should be thus fed, while God has honoured us with rational speech and a sense of equity. And yet we are become worse than the wild beast.

~ John Chrysostom

In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.

~ Guy Debord

TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little, Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-ward resumes its liberty.

~ Walt Whitman

Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.

~ Bertrand Russell

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment -- assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure. In America men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons.

~ Bertrand Russell