Philosophy Quotes

Their [philosophers] thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a re-recognizing, a remembering, a return and a home-coming to a far-off, ancient common-household of the soul, out of which those ideas formerly grew: philosophizing is so far a kind of atavism of the highest order.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Life is like yoga, the only way you can enjoy it is by relaxing into any position you happen to find yourself in.

~ Jon Wakeham

For a game, you don’t need a teacher.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect.

~ Jeanette Winterson

They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words. And [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. Though I may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, I shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy: on experience, the mistress of their masters.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

This is why they started us here so young: to give ourselves away before the age when the questions 'why' and 'to what' grow real beaks and claws.

~ David Foster Wallace

There is no problem more difficult to solve than that created by ourselves.

~ Felix Alba-Juez

Love' is the only weapon I have, I will defend with love, I will attack with love.

~ Amit Kalantri

Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters.

~ Dejan Stojanovic

One must reach out and try to grasp this astonishing finesse, that the value of lif cannot be estimated.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Those who do not think bout the future cannot have one.

~ Michael J. Kami

I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibers that absorb the sun, consuming and digesting. Under the thatched arbor of a restaurant on a river-bank, where Olivia had waited for me, our teeth began to move slowly, with equal rhythm, and our eyes stared into each other's with the intensity of serpents'—serpents concentrated in the ecstasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware, in our turn, of being swallowed by the serpent that digests us all, assimilated ceaselessly in the process of ingestion and digestion, in the universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinango a la vera cru-zana, and enchiladas.

~ Italo Calvino

Never say no to now

~ Benny Bellamacina

According to the Buddha's teaching the beginning of the life-stream of living beings is unthinkable. THe believer in the creation of life by God may be astonished at this reply. But if you were to ask him 'What is the beginning of God?' he would answer without hesitation 'God has no beginning', and he is not astonished at his own reply.

~ Walpola Rahula

Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.

~ Epicurus

There is no future without a past, because what is to be cannot be imagined except as a form of repetition.

~ Siri Hustvedt

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

~ James P. Carse

You see, the deaf have an intimacy with silence. It’s there in their dreams.

~ Shane L. Koyczan

If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?

~ Carl Sagan

You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I tire of your whining.

~ N.k. Jemisin

I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions. I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available; but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. The kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time when it was expressed. I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. I hope, therefore, that whoever uses this dictionary will not suppose the remarks which it quotes to be intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim.

~ Bertrand Russell

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

Where humanitysowed faith, hope, and unity, joy’s garden blossomed.

~ Aberjhani

All men have their frailties; and whoever looks for a friend without imperfections, will never find what he seeks.

~ Cyrus The Great

A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty, but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.

~ Frank Herbert

Those who meet Jesus always experience either joy or its opposites, either foretastes of Heaven or foretastes of Hell. Not everyone who meets Jesus is pleased, and not everyone is happy, but everyone is shocked.

~ Peter Kreeft

I think I exist, therefore I exist. I think.

~ David Gerrold

Look, girls know when they’re cute,” he said. “You don’t have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn’t have a job. I was like, ‘How are you going to get a job there in this market?’ And she’s like, ‘I’ll wink and I’ll smile.’ She’s a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen.

~ Daniel Amory

Imagination is cheap as long as you don't have to worry about the details.

~ Daniel C. Dennett

It is closer to the truth to say that God is crazy than that God is reasonable. I suspect God merely smiles when someone calls him crazy, but shakes His head and frowns when someone calls Him reasonable.

~ Peter Kreeft

Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp.

~ Edward Abbey

The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

~ Alain De Botton

There's no backward and no forward, no day other than this. You fill your cart as you go, and that's that.

~ John Burnham Schwartz

Were prayers of murderers, when fighting on the “right side” of the war, ever heard—let alone answered?

~ Kristina Mcmorris

Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth.

~ Aberjhani

Snow floated down every once in a while, but it was frail snow, like a memory fading into the distance.

~ Haruki Murakami

Believe in human beings - not all are good, but deep down all can be. But that doesn't mean you need to hang around crappy people and try to turn them around.

~ Jonas Eriksson

It's not him who's disturbed. But he likes to disturb others--to shake them out of their rut.

~ Jostein Gaarder

Be the kind of person who catches the shit before it hits the fan, not the one who scrapes it off afterwards.

~ Jonas Eriksson

We're on a planet, relax!

~ Benny Bellamacina