Philosophy Quotes

I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

A wise man once said, never discuss philosophy or politics in a disco environment.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

the power of philosophy floats through my head.. light like a feather, heavy as lead.

Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.

The map is not the territory.

Lose your mind and come to your senses.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.

A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

We make war that we may live in peace.

Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

I think it's wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.

The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions...The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.

I visited many places, Some of them quite Exotic and far away, But I always returned to myself.

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.

Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.

Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and thank him for his prescription.

Philosophy is, in the last instance, class struggle in the field of theory.

Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.

Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.

Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.

Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.

It is the hour to be drunken! to escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have known all along that it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek.

I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.

The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

By daily dying, I have come to be.

In mysticism that love of truth which we saw as the beginning of all philosophy leaves the merely intellectual sphere, and takes on the assured aspect of a personal passion. Where the philosopher guesses and argues, the mystic lives and looks; and speaks, consequently, the disconcerting language of first-hand experience, not the neat dialectic of the schools. Hence whilst the Absolute of the metaphysicians remains a diagram —impersonal and unattainable—the Absolute of the mystics is lovable, attainable, alive.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the "someday I'll" philosophy.

All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one.

In a philosophical dispute, he gains most who is defeated, since he learns most.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.

Philosophy is the highest music.

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them.

The first duty of a man is to think for himself

In the battle that is philosophy all the techniques of war, including looting and camouflage, are permissible.

Ignorance is not bliss - it is oblivion.

We live in a day when the adversary stresses on every hand the philosophy of instant gratification. We seem to demand instant everything, including instant solutions to our problems. . .It was meant to be that life would be a challenge. To suffer some anxiety, some depression, some disappointment, even some failure is normal.

Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.

Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see.

Golf is 20 percent mechanics and technique. The other 80 pecent is philosophy, humor, tragedy, romance, melodrama, companionship, camaraderie, cussedness and conversation.

When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.

You can't do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.

In many places it is literally not safe physically for youngsters to go to school. And in many schools, and its becoming almost generally true, it is spiritually unsafe to attend public schools. Look back over the history of education to the turn of the century and the beginning of the educational philosophies, pragmatism and humanism were the early ones, and they branched out into a number of other philosophies which have led us now into a circumstance where our schools are producing the problems that we face.

My philosophy of leadership is to surround myself with good people who have ability, judgment and knowledge, but above all, a passion for service.

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes "sight-seeing."

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.

Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.

Freedom from fear' could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth.

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

No girl who is going to marry need bother to win a college degree; she just naturally becomes a "Master of Arts" and a "Doctor of Philosophy" after catering to an ordinary man for a few years.

Every solution breeds new problems.

God is a philosophical black hole-the point where reason breaks down.

Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory.

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the grounds of his color I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men I say that intelligence has never saved anyone: and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.

Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things; and I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatever state he is.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being.

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.

There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil." —Luke Skywalker

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.

I have a 'Play The Melody' philosophy. It means don't over arrange, don't make life difficult. Just play the melody-and do it the simplest way possible.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.

Man is by nature a political animal.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes "” I mean the universe "” but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written

Philosophy is a kind of journey, ever learning yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth.

We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens—like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It’s never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.

My philosophy of dating is to just fart right away.

If the philosophy of Christianity were lived, wars would cease, unhappiness would cease, economic problems would be solved, poverty would be wiped from the face of the earth, and man's inhumanity to man would be transmuted into a spirit of mutual helpfulness.

To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.

All parts of the human body get tired eventually - except the tongue.

Love is love's reward.

Philosophies change by the day while God never changes, simply because, being perfect, He does not have to change!

Sometimes I think life is just a rodeo, the trick is to ride and make it to the bell.

It's a pretty sure thing that the player's bat is what speaks loudest when it's contract time, but there are moments when the glove has the last word.

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you I the best place for the next moment.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

I'd rather be a free man in my grave than living as a puppet or a slave.

Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not landscape painting be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but the experiments?

Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.

There is no philosophy which is not founded upon knowledge of the phenomena, but to get any profit from this knowledge it is absolutely necessary to be a mathematician.

If you don't ask the right questions, you don't get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer. Asking questions is the ABC of diagnosis. Only the inquiring mind solves problems.

Those that study particular sciences, and neglect philosophy, are like Penelope's wooers, that make love to the waiting women.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you still see the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things too. That's the consolation of philosophy.

I have loved to the point of madness; That which is called madness, That which to me, Is the only sensible way to love.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

One of the goals of philosophy is wage theoretical battle. That is why we can say that every thesis is always, by its very nature, an antithesis. A thesis is only ever put forward in opposition to another thesis, or in defence of a new one.

The deeper thought is, the taller it becomes.

It is beautiful to talk about beautiful things and even more beautiful to silently gaze at them.

Philosophy is an amazing tissue of really fine thinking and incredible, puerile mistakes. It's like one of those rubber 'bones' they give dogs to chew, damned good for the mind's teeth, but as food - no bloody good at all.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i. e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.

The thing I am most aware of is my limits. And this is natural; for I never, or almost never, occupy the middle of my cage; my whole being surges toward the bars.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

There is no shorter path for joining a neutral existential anthropology, according to philosophy, with the existential decision before God, according to the Bible.

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

I think when I was two years old in the sandbox. I think I formulated my basic philosophy there, and I haven't really had to alter it very much ever since

We forget old stories, but those stories remain the same.

I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

Without claiming to be exhaustive, I maintain that every philosophy reproduces within itself, in one way or another, the conflict in which it finds itself compromised and caught up in the outside world.

Life is really about a spiritual unfolding that is personal and enchanting - an unfolding that no science or philosophy or religion has yet fully clarified.

Possible is more a matter of attitude, A matter of decision, to choose Among the impossible possibilities, When one sound opportunity Becomes a possible solution.

The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.

A truce to philosophy!"”Life is before me, and I rush into possession. Hope, glory, love, and blameless ambition are my guides, and my soul knows no dread. What has been, though sweet, is gone; the present is good only because it is about to change, and the to come is all my own.

Integrity of life is fame's best friend, which nobly, beyond death, shall crown in the end.

History, we can confidently assert, is useful in the sense that art and music, poetry and flowers, religion and philosophy are useful. Without it - as with these - life would be poorer and meaner; without it we should be denied some of those intellectual and moral experiences which give meaning and richness to life. Surely it is no accident that the study of history has been the solace of many of the noblest minds of every generation.

In the lie of truth lies the truth.

What one decides to do in crisis depends on one's philosophy of life, and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn't any philosophy in crises, others make the decision.

The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.

It occurs to me to wonder: do I believe in any god, or even positively not believe, as James does? I believe in systems and methods. I believe in the beauties of philosophy and poetry. I believe that the work we do and leave behind us is our afterlife; and I believe that history lies, but sometimes so well that I can't bring myself to resent it. I believe that truth is beauty, but not, I'm afraid, the reverse. It doesn't seem sufficient to sustain one in life's rigorous moments. Perhaps I shall embrace Islam. Its standards for poetry seem very high.

On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or philosophy, or learning-regions where the years are scarcely noticed and the young and old can meet in a pale truthful light.

Politics is a contest among people of diverse backgrounds and philosophies, advocating different solutions to common problems. The system only works when principled, energetic people participate.

Let no one delay the study of philosophy while young nor weary of it when old.

Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Well socialism is exactly the reverse.

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Everyone has some kind of philosophy, some general worldview, which to men of other views will seem mythological.

Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords - philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather.

Without philosophy man cannot know what he makes; without religion he cannot know why.

But it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that the religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit, and these days it is easy to lose sight of that as, like our society itself, churches are becoming more politicized and polarized. Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.

It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.

There is no genius who hasn't a touch of insanity.

We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy.

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.

Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization.

Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.

The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape.

Enough is as good as a feast.

Thoughtful people of different political philosophies can disagree, but in a very agreeable manner.

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

My definition (of a philosopher) is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down.

Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of the good way of life.

Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.

A peace that comes from fear and not from the heart is the opposite of peace.

Man may be considered as a superior species of animal that produces philosophies and poems in about the same way a silkworm produces their cocoons and bees their hives.

I am inspired by many mediums and use them to express varied aspects of my philosophies and life observations.

My philosophy? Simplicity plus variety.

You have a lot to learn, young man. Philosophy. Theology. Literature. Poetry. Drama. History. Archeology. Anthropology. Mythology. Music. These are your tools as much as brush and pigment. You cannot be an artist until you are civilized. You cannot be civilized until you learn. To be civilized is to know where you belong in the continuum of our art and your world. To surmount the past, you must know the past.

History is Philosophy teaching by example.

I went off to college planning to major in math or philosophy— of course, both those ideas are really the same idea.

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

I just want to be healthy and happy. I don't want to hurt anybody or make them mad. If that's a philosophy then that's my philosophy.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

These two are not two Love has made them one Amo Ergo Sum! And by its mystery Each is no less but more.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do "practice"?

How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets Where no crude surfeit reigns

It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.

The Copernican revolution brought about by Kant was, I think, the most important single turning point in the history of philosophy.

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

Philosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines.

Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always of philosophers.

In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way.

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

To persevere is always a reflection of the state of one's inner life, one's philosophy and one's perspective

Scientific theories never dictate human values, but they can often cast new light on ethical issues. From a sexual selection viewpoint, moral philosophy and political theory have mostly been attempts to shift male human sexual competitiveness from physical violence to the peaceful accumulation of wealth and status. The rights to life, liberty, and property are cultural inventions that function, in part, to keep males from killing and stealing from one another while they compete to attract sexual partners.

Greatness, generally speaking, is an unusual quantity of a usual quality grafted upon a common man.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers.

I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be man's guide in the foreseeable future; however, they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.

Philosophy appears to concern itself only with the truth, but perhaps expresses only fantasies, while literature appears to concern itself only with fantasies, but perhaps it expresses the truth.

Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways: the point, however, is to change it.

So what I am always looking for is, I'm always looking for something that that person has told me that nobody else has told me. It is normally not an opinion, and it is normally not a philosophy. It's almost always a story. Because we all share similar philosophies, we all share similar opinions on a lot of different issues, but all of our stories are our own.

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion.

How alive is thought, invisible, yet without thought there is no sight.

One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it's very complex, it's very profound.

Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy

Again, both literature and philosophy work by appealing to certain reigning idols.

I am concerned, rather, that there should not be more things dreamt of in my philosophy than there actually are in heaven and earth.

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.

The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.

We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself."

The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

Perhaps it is of more value to infuriate philosophers than to go along with them.

People generally quarrel because they can't argue.

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

Philosophy only seems to offer endless dispute, with no cakes and ale.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Money doesn't change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, the money brings that out, that's all.

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars.

Music fathoms the sky.

This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.

Philosophy is nothing but discretion.

Philosophy may be dodged, eloquence cannot.

I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be involved actively.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum. (I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am

He is the richest who is content with the least.

Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.

We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ''Blessed are they that mourn.''

The secret to humor is surprise.

Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic activity of man.

If you love it enough, anything will talk with you.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

PESSIMISM- philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.

A star needs a star.

History is a pageant and not a philosophy.

History is the great dust-heap... a pageant and not a philosophy.

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.

The world is truly beautiful solely in the eyes of a true philosopher.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Based on the law of probability Everything is possible because The sheer existence of possibility Confirms the existence Of impossibility.

Fiction supplies the only philosophy that may readers know; it establishes their ethical, social, and material standards; it confirms them in their prejudices or opens their minds to a wider world.

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.

I've developed a new philosophy... I only dread one day at a time.

Every philosophy is the philosophy of some stage of life.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

…a few philosophers really do important work. This applies to the so called ‘critical philosophy’ and to the theory of knowledge or epistemology. This class of workers I call epistemologists to avoid the disagreeable implications of the term ‘philosopher’.

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.

I think; therefore I am.

Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery — the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets — is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.

I have done my best. That is about all the philosophy of living one needs.

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.

Beauty is a cheap word, but beauty remains priceless.

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.

When the long bygone Lee Po wanted to say something, he could do it with only a few words.

To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.

To understand possible means to understand impossible.

All serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy.

Philosophy is to science as masturbation is to sex.

If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.

According to the saying of an ancient philosopher, one should eat to live, and not live to eat

Teaching others, he corrected himself.

I imagined I was God for a millisecond And became speechless for a long time.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

Men regard it as their right to return evil for evil and, if they cannot, feel they have lost their liberty.

Truth is hard-hearted and unrelenting, too clear, precise; a lie is much more imaginative.

Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.

After Homer and Dante, is a whole century of creating worth one Shakespeare?

A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.

It is easy to build a philosophy—it doesn't have to run.

Teaching is the highest form of understanding.

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way.

Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

If you wish to understand a philosopher, do not ask what he says, but find out what he wants

Tell me what gives a man or woman their greatest pleasure and I'll tell you their philosophy of life.

When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.

The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men - the man he is and the man he wants to be.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.

The province of philosophy is not so much to prevent calamities befalling as to demonstrate that they are blessings when they have taken place.

It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered.

When I want to be reminded of stupidity, especially my own, I turn on the TV.