Philosophy quotes

A useless life is an early death.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

I don’t believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

There is nothing so stable as change.

What is the Tao Te Ching? Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

I believe Karl Marx could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

Sorry, I’m still a dialectical materialist.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

Silence is the mother of truth.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?