Philosophy quotes

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

You just have to have a simple faith.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

There’s this lingering philosophy that movie stars shouldn’t do TV.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Freedom without limits is just a word.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

I believe in the Golden Rule – The Man with the Gold… Rules.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Absence and death are the same – only that in death there is no suffering.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.