Philosophy quotes

It is natural to die as to be born.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Knowledge is true opinion.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

Theology is unnecessary.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‚Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.