Philosophy quotes

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Man – a being in search of meaning.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

By indignities men come to dignities.

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

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.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.