Philosophy quotes

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

Nature abhors annihilation.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

Truth is what works.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Words are loaded pistols.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

Life is warfare.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

History should be written as philosophy.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

Existence precedes and rules essence.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.