Philosophy Quotes

A man must not be without shame, for the shame of being without shame is shamelessness indeed.

~ Mencius

If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones.

~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Don’t reject something just because it seems strange. It’s comfort that will kill you in the end.

~ Simon Morden

Propounding peace and love without practical or institutional engagement is delusion, not virtue.

~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Hence the great irony: Hayek, one of the greatest champions of individual liberty and economic freedom the world has ever known, believed that knowledge was communal. Dewey, the champion of socialism and collectivism, believed that knowledge was individual. Hayek's is a philosophy that treats individuals as the best judges of their own self-interests, which in turn yield staggering communal cooperation. Dewey's was the philosophy of a giant, Monty Pythonesque crowd shouting on cue: We're All Individuals!

~ Jonah Goldberg

[O]ther thinkers have philosophised since the time of Plato, but that does not destroy the interest and beauty of his philosophy

~ Frederick Charles Copleston

When they have discovered truth in nature they fling it into a book, where it is even worse hands.

~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The Philosopher's Motto: I came, I saw, I pondered!

~ Greg Curtis

I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world?

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

Question everything, unless it's the answer

~ Benny Bellamacina

...if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.

~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one in our society to a dark and disillusioned life...to beauty all is forgiven.

~ Muriel Barbery

My ship came in,then it sank!

~ Brian T. Shirley

If you write in the Old World, and against it, your work must die, go missing, be veiled, before it can live the life for which it was destined in the New World.

~ Patrick Nowell-Smith

It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine.

~ John Stuart Mill

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchmen?

~ Alan Moore

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found.

~ Walpola Rahula

The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption. His soul is restless, fortune uncertain, and fame doubtful; to be brief, as a stream so are all things belonging to the body; as a dream, or as a smoke, so are all that belong unto the soul. Our life is a warfare, and a mere pilgrimage. Fame after life is no better than oblivion. What is it then that will adhere and follow? Only one thing, philosophy. And philosophy doth consist in this, for a man to preserve that spirit which is within him, from all manner of contumelies and injuries, and above all pains or pleasures; never to do anything either rashly, or feignedly, or hypocritically: only to depend from himself, and his own proper actions: all things that happen unto him to embrace contentendly, as coming from Him from whom he himself also came; and above all things, with all meekness and a calm cheerfulness, to expect death, as being nothing else but the resolution of those elements, of which every creature is composed. And if the elements themselves suffer nothing by their perpetual conversion of one into another, that dissolution, and alteration, which is so common unto all, why should it be feared by any? Is not this according to nature? But nothing that is according to nature can be evil.

~ Marcus Aurelius

One never knows how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her — is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? It is the very least question of definitions.

~ Gregory Maguire

Books can be immensely powerful. The ideas in them can change the way people think. Yet it was the Nazis and Stalin's officers who committed terrible crimes, and not Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto - and of course, the Manifesto contained many key ideas that are still relevant and important today, long after Stalin has gone. There is a crucial distinction between the book and its effect - it's crucial because if you talk about a book being harmful rather than its effect you begin to legitimise censorship. Abhorrent ideas need to be challenged by better ones, not banned.

~ John Farndon

Always blow your own trumpet, blowing someone else’s is unhygienic

~ Benny Bellamacina

If I hold my head to the left and look down at the handle grips and front wheel and map carrier and gas tank I get one pattern of sense data. If I move my head to the right I get another slightly different pattern of sense data. The two views are different. The angles of the planes and curves of the metal are different. The sunlight strikes them differently. If there's no logical basis for substance then there's no logical basis for concluding that what's produced these two views is the same motorcycle.

~ Robert M. Pirsig

Thank heaven for people who are satisfied with facts that conform to the reality they wish to believe.

~ Gary Inbinder

If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you'll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their marriage customs, in the holidays they observe, in their religious rituals, and so on, but they all expect the food to be under lock and key. It's all owned, and if you want some, you'll have to buy it.

~ Daniel Quinn

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

~ Thomas De Quincey

The source of man's rights is not divine law or a congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A ___ and man is man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product for his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational

~ Ayn Rand

I will tell you why I became a philosopher. I became a philosopher because I wanted to be able to talk about many, many things, ideally with knowledge, but sometimes not quite the amount of knowledge that I would need if I were to be a specialist in them. It allows you to be many different things. And plurality and complexity are very, very important to me.

~ Alexander Nehamas

By heavens! there is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick.

~ Joseph Conrad

When a fixed code of laws, which must be observed to the letter, leaves no further care to the judge than to examine the acts of citizens and to decide whether or not they conform to the law as written; then the standard of the just or the unjust, which is to be the norm of conduct for the ignorant as well as for the philosophic citizen, is not a matter of controversy but of fact; then only are citizens not subject to the petty tyrannies of the many which are the more cruel as the distance between the oppressed and the oppressor is less, and which are far more fatal than those of a single man, for the despotism of many can only be corrected by the despotism of one; the cruelty of a single despot is proportioned, not to his might, but to the obstacles he encounters.

~ Cesare Beccaria

The cynic sees only cynicism, the depressive can taint creation with one glance

~ Anna Funder

If your dreams seem to be drifting away, wake up!

~ Benny Bellamacina

If that which we have found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for save corruption? If this is the great evil of being alone, than what is good and what is evil?

~ Ayn Rand

Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown! It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes be content with less?

~ Henry David Thoreau

Let education kindle only those which are truly beneficialto the human species; let it favour those alone which are really necessary to the maintenance of society. The passions of man are dangerous, only because every thing conspires to give them an evil direction.

~ Paul Henri Thiry D'holbach

For any given problem, if there's a simple solution it will already have been applied. So, perhaps, the solution isn't as simple as you think.

~ Stuart Aken

And you don’t even need to say anything. I’m screwed up. I don’t know how any of this works anymore than you do. But I do believe you’re worth every second it would take to figure it out,” Mason said, a smile taking over his features.

~ Holly Hood

Sufficiently simple natural structures are predictable but uncontrollable, whereas sufficiently complex symbolic descriptions are controllable but unpredictable.

~ Howard Pattee

Христовият мир е свобода от греха, а мирът на света е свобода на греха...

~ Схиархимандрит Касиан

Great understanding is broad and unhurried, little understanding is cramped and busy. Great words are clear and limpid, little words are shrill and quarrelsome.

~ Chuang Chou