Philosophy quotes

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

When you give, it comes back to you.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

Our philosophy is that we care about people first.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

Science is nothing but perception.

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

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

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

And yet it moves.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

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

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.