Philosophy Quotes: 304 Sourced Quotations

Analects1 quotations

I am not one who was born with knowledge; I love the ancients and earnestly seek it there.

Analects, VII.20

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Aristotle 12 quotations

All men by nature desire to know.

Metaphysics, I, 1, 980a

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Man is by nature a political animal.

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Nature does nothing in vain.

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Nature is a principle of motion and change.

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Poetry is more philosophical and weightier than history: it speaks of the universal, history of the particular.

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The city is by nature prior to the individual, for the whole is necessarily prior to the part.

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The friend is another self.

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The good of man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete.

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This alone of all the sciences is free, for it alone exists for its own sake.

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Thought thinks itself in grasping the intelligible, and its thinking is a thinking of thinking.

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To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false; while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.

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Virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way the person of practical wisdom would determine it.

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Bacon 5 quotations

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

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Four kinds of idols beset the human mind.

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Human knowledge and human power meet in one, for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced.

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Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

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The only hope lies in a true induction.

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Beauvoir 3 quotations

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. No biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female assumes within society.

The Second Sex, vol. II

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There is freedom only as engaged, willing itself by willing the disclosure of being through a world.

The Ethics of Ambiguity

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There is no such thing as a natural death.

A Very Easy Death

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Bentham 7 quotations

All punishment in itself is evil. Upon the principle of utility, if it ought at all to be admitted, it ought only to be admitted in as far as it promises to exclude some greater evil.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. XIII, §2

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By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. I, §2

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Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.

Anarchical Fallacies

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Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. I, §1

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Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry.

The Rationale of Reward

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The interest of the community then is, what? — the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. I, §4

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The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. XVII

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Camus 4 quotations

I do not know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.

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I rebel—therefore we exist.

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One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

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What matters is to die unreconciled and not of one's own free will.

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Chāndogya Upaniṣad1 quotations

Thou art that.

Chāndogya Upaniṣad, VI, 8, 7 (tat tvam asi)

On

Charles Sanders Peirce 4 quotations

Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

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Reasoning should not form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link, but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected.

Some Consequences of Four Incapacities (1868)

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The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.

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The word or sign which man uses is the man himself.

Some Consequences of Four Incapacities (1868)

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Cleanthes1 quotations

Lead me, Zeus, and you too, Destiny, wherever you have appointed me: I shall follow unflinching. And should I refuse, turned coward, I shall follow none the less.

Cleanthes, quoted in Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 107

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Condorcet1 quotations

The perfectibility of man is truly indefinite; and the progress of this perfectibility has no other limit than the duration of the globe on which nature has placed us.

Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795)

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Confucius 15 quotations

A man without humaneness, what has he to do with the rites? A man without humaneness, what has he to do with music?

Analects, III, 3

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At seventy, I could follow my heart's desire without overstepping the line.

Analects, II.4

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By nature men are close to one another; through practice they grow far apart.

Analects, XVII, 2

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Each day I examine myself on three points: have I been faithful in acting for others, sincere with my friends, and have I practised what was taught to me?

Analects, I, 4

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He who governs by virtue may be compared to the pole star, which keeps its place while all the other stars turn toward it.

Analects (Lunyu), 2.1

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He who revives the old to understand the new is fit to be a teacher.

Analects, II, 11

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I transmit and do not create; I love the Ancients and trust them.

Analects, VII, 1

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If names are not correct, language is not in accord with the truth of things; then affairs cannot succeed.

Analects, XIII, 3

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Is humaneness far off? No sooner do I desire it than it is here.

Analects, VII.29

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Lead the people by virtue, keep them in order by the rites, and they will have a sense of shame and come to you.

Analects, II, 3

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Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Analects, II, 15

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The noble person seeks it in himself; the small person seeks it in others.

Analects (Lunyu), 15.21

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To master oneself and return to the rites: that is humaneness (ren).

Analects, XII, 1

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Uprightness lies in this: the father screens his son, and the son screens his father.

Analects, XIII, 18

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What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.

Analects, XV, 24

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Descartes 5 quotations

Generosity, which is as it were the key to all the other virtues.

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I always had an intense desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, in order to see clearly into my own actions and to walk with confidence in this life.

Discourse on the Method, I

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I think, therefore I am.

Discourse on Method, IV

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Instead of that speculative philosophy taught in the schools, we may find a practical one […] and thus render ourselves, as it were, masters and possessors of nature.

Discourse on Method, VI

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To strive always to master myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world.

Discourse on Method, III

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Diogenes of Sinope 4 quotations

"Ask of me any boon you like." "Stand out of my sunlight."

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 38

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He lit a lamp in broad daylight and said: "I am looking for a man."

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 41

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When asked where he came from, he said: "I am a citizen of the world."

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 63

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When someone argued that there is no such thing as motion, he got up and walked about.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives, VI, 39

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Epictetus 6 quotations

It is difficulties that show what men are.

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Men are disturbed not by things, but by the opinions about things.

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Of things, some are in our power, and others are not.

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On no occasion call yourself a philosopher: be one.

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Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.

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The subject-matter of the art of living is each person's own life.

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Epicurus 10 quotations

Bread and water confer the highest pleasure when one brings them to needy lips.

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Death is nothing to us; for so long as we exist, death is not with us, and when death comes, then we do not exist.

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Empty is the word of the philosopher that heals no human suffering.

fr. 221 Usener (Porphyry, Letter to Marcella, 31)

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Live unnoticed.

Fragment 551 Usener (lathe biosas)

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Natural justice is a compact of advantage, made to the end that men may neither harm one another nor be harmed.

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Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of a whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.

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Of the desires, some are natural and necessary, some natural but not necessary, and some neither natural nor necessary but arising from empty opinion.

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Pleasure is the beginning and the end of the blessed life.

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The blessed and incorruptible being neither has trouble itself nor causes trouble to another; hence it is moved neither by anger nor by favour.

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The totality of things is made of bodies and void.

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George Berkeley1 quotations

Their being is to be perceived; nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds which perceive them.

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Hegel 7 quotations

Everything turns on grasping and expressing the true not only as substance, but equally as subject.

Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface

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I that is We, and We that is I.

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Philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought.

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The beautiful is the sensuous shining of the Idea.

Lectures on Aesthetics, Introduction

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The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.

Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Preface

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The true is the whole.

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World history is the progress in the consciousness of freedom.

Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Introduction

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Homer2 quotations

Endure, my heart; you have borne worse before this.

On

He saw the cities of many men and knew their minds.

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Hume 7 quotations

A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

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After a repetition of similar instances, the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant... This connexion, therefore, which we feel in the mind, is the impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary connexion.

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All our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, it is impossible for us to think of anything which we have not antecedently felt.

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Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

Essays, "Of the Standard of Taste"

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For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other... I never can catch myself at any time without a perception.

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Morality is more properly felt than judg'd of.

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Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.

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Husserl2 quotations

The garment of ideas of the mathematical sciences makes us take for true being what is only a method.

The Crisis of the European Sciences, §9

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We want to go back to the things themselves.

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James1 quotations

The true, to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking.

Pragmatism, lecture VI

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Kalama Sutta1 quotations

Do not go by hearsay or tradition, but when you know for yourselves: this is wholesome, then take it up.

Kalama Sutta

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Kant 9 quotations

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

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Argue as much as you will and about what you will, but obey!

An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

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I freely admit that it was the objection of David Hume that, many years ago, first interrupted my dogmatic slumber.

Prolegomena, Preface

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I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

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Nothing in the world, indeed nothing even beyond the world, can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.

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Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding: this is the motto of the Enlightenment.

An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

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The beautiful is that which pleases universally without a concept.

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Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

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Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

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Laozi 7 quotations

Governing a great state is like frying a small fish.

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Nothing in the world is softer and weaker than water; yet for attacking what is hard and strong nothing surpasses it.

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The Dao does nothing, and yet nothing is left undone.

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The Dao that can be named is not the constant Dao.

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The human models himself on the earth, the earth on heaven, heaven on the Dao, and the Dao on itself.

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The more clever tools there are, the more the state sinks into disorder.

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The more laws and edicts there are, the more thieves and robbers multiply.

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Leibniz 7 quotations

In every true affirmative proposition the predicate is contained in the subject: praedicatum inest subjecto.

Discourse on Metaphysics, §8; Generales inquisitiones

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It follows from the supreme perfection of God that in producing the universe he chose the best possible plan.

Monadology, §55; Theodicy

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Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself.

New Essays on Human Understanding, II, 1

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Reasons incline without necessitating.

Theodicy

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Supposing there were a machine whose structure made it think... on visiting it one would find only parts pushing one another, and never anything to explain a perception.

Monadology, §17

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The monads have no windows through which anything could enter or leave.

Monadology, §7

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When a controversy arises, there will be no more need of disputation between two philosophers than between two accountants. It will suffice to take their pens, sit down, and say: let us calculate.

On the Art of Combinations / Letters

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Locke 6 quotations

As far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person.

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Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

Second Treatise of Government, §6

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Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: how comes it to be furnished? ... To this I answer, in one word, from experience.

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Of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education.

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The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided ... he hath mixed his labour with, and thereby makes it his property.

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The mind, if it will proceed rationally, ought to examine all the grounds of probability ... and upon a due balancing the whole, reject or receive it, with a more or less firm assent, proportionably to the preponderancy of the greater grounds of probability.

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Lucretius 6 quotations

Death, then, is nothing to us and touches us not at all, since the nature of the mind is held to be mortal.

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Nature cries aloud for nothing else but that pain be kept away from the body, and that the mind enjoy pleasant sensation, free of care and fear.

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Nothing is ever created out of nothing by divine power.

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Nothing was born in the body that we might use it: it is the thing born that creates the use.

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So much wrong could religion prompt.

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Whence comes this will wrested from the fates, by which we move wherever pleasure leads each on? The swerve breaks the decrees of fate.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein 5 quotations

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 109

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The meaning of a word is its use in the language.

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The questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn.

On Certainty, §341 (posthumous notes)

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What is your aim in philosophy? — To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

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Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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Machiavelli 4 quotations

Everyone sees what you appear to be, but few perceive what you are.

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I judge it may be true that fortune is the arbiter of half our actions, but that she still leaves the other half, or nearly so, for us to govern.

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It has seemed to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it. Many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen or known to exist in truth.

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One must therefore be a fox to recognize snares, and a lion to frighten off the wolves.

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Marcus Aurelius 10 quotations

All that is in tune with you, O Universe, is in tune with me: nothing that comes in season for you is too early or too late for me.

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As Antoninus, my city and homeland is Rome; as a man, it is the world.

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Begin each day by telling yourself: today I shall meet the meddler, the ungrateful, the insolent; but none can bind me to what is base, nor make me angry at a kinsman.

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Men seek retreats for themselves, in the country, by the sea, in the hills; but nowhere can a man withdraw into more quiet than into his own soul.

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No one loses any other life than the one he now lives, nor lives any other than the one he now loses.

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Pass out of life as a ripe olive falls, blessing the nature that produced it and giving thanks to the tree on which it grew.

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Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

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What I am is only a little flesh, a little breath, and the ruling part.

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What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee either.

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What stands in the way of action advances action. What blocks the road becomes the road.

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Marx 17 quotations

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.

The German Ideology, 1846

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Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.

Capital, vol. I, ch. 31

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Critique of the Gotha Programme

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In practice man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking.

Theses on Feuerbach, II

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It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859

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Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances directly given and inherited from the past.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

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Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1844

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The bourgeoisie has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.

Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848

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The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848

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The human essence is no abstraction inherent in the isolated individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations.

Theses on Feuerbach, VI

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The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.

The German Ideology

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The modern state power is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848

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The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Theses on Feuerbach, XI (1845)

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The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848

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The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852

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The worker therefore does not affirm himself in his labour but denies himself; does not feel content but unhappy.

1844 Manuscripts

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Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848

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Marx and Engels1 quotations

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

The Communist Manifesto

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Max More1 quotations

We will no longer tolerate the tyranny of aging and death.

'A Letter to Mother Nature' (1999)

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Michel de Montaigne 10 quotations

Because it was he, because it was I.

Essays, I, 28 ("On friendship")

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Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own practice.

Essays, I, 31, "Of Cannibals"

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I am myself the matter of my book.

Essays, "To the Reader"

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I do not portray being: I portray passing.

Essays, III, 2, "Of Repentance"

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It is faith alone that vividly and certainly embraces the high mysteries of our religion.

Essays, II, 12, "Apology for Raymond Sebond"

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Laws keep their credit not because they are just, but because they are laws.

Essays, III, 13, "Of Experience"

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Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live fitly.

Essays, III, 13, "Of Experience"

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We are never at home, we are always beyond ourselves.

Essays, I, 3, "Our Feelings Reach Out Beyond Us"

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What do I know?

Essays, II, 12, "Apology for Raymond Sebond"

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Oh, what a soft and delightful pillow, and a healthy one, is ignorance and incuriosity, for resting a well-made head!

Essays, III, 13 (Of Experience)

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Mill 6 quotations

Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.

Utilitarianism, ch. 2

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Everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one.

Utilitarianism, ch. V

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Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides.

On Liberty, ch. 3

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It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.

Utilitarianism, ch. 2

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The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

On Liberty, ch. 1

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To silence the expression of an opinion is to rob the human race; those who dissent from it still more than those who hold it.

On Liberty, ch. 2

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Nāgārjuna 4 quotations

It is not tenable that inherent existence should arise from causes and conditions: an inherent existence arisen from causes and conditions would be something fabricated.

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, XV, 1-2

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Never and nowhere does anything exist that is arisen from itself, from another, from both, or without a cause.

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, I, 1

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The Dharma taught by the buddhas rests on two truths: the conventional, worldly truth and the truth in the ultimate sense. Without relying on the conventional, the ultimate is not taught; without reaching the ultimate, nirvāṇa is not attained.

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, XXIV, 8-10

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There is no difference at all between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa; there is no difference at all between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra.

Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, XXV, 19

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Nietzsche 11 quotations

Become what you are.

The Gay Science, §270; Ecce Homo, subtitle

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God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!

The Gay Science, §125

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It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.

The Birth of Tragedy, §5

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Man does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.

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Man is something that shall be overcome.

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My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.

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There are no facts, only interpretations.

Posthumous Fragments, autumn 1885-1886, 7[60]

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There are no moral phenomena, only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

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There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival knowing.

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We have art so that we do not perish of the truth.

Posthumous fragments, spring 1888, 16 [40]

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What does not kill me makes me stronger.

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Novalis1 quotations

The mysterious path leads inward. In us, or nowhere, is eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.

Pollen

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Plato 8 quotations

A beauty that always is, neither coming to be nor passing away, neither increasing nor diminishing; nor again beautiful in one part and ugly in another.

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Nature herself shows that it is just for the better to have more than the worse, and the more capable than the less.

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Seeking and learning are in fact nothing but recollection.

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The Good is not being, but still beyond being, surpassing it in dignity and power.

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This dwelling is the prison; the light of the fire in it is the sun; and the upward journey is the ascent of the soul into the intelligible region.

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Those who practise philosophy in the right way are in training for dying.

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To them, would not the truth be literally nothing but the shadows of the artificial objects?

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What is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is that which is always becoming and never is?

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Plotinus 3 quotations

It is none of the things of which it is the source; such is its nature that, though nothing can be affirmed of it, not name, not reason, we can yet say something concerning it.

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This is the life of gods and of godlike and blessed men: a deliverance from all things here below, the flight of the alone to the Alone.

On , their position:

Withdraw into yourself and look: and if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the sculptor of a statue that is to be made beautiful.

On , their position:

Pyrrho1 quotations

Things are no more this than that, nor both at once, nor neither.

Aristocles, cited by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV, 18

On , their position:

Rousseau 9 quotations

Conscience! conscience! divine instinct, immortal and heavenly voice.

Emile, Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar

On , their position:

Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.

Emile, book I

On , their position:

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

The Social Contract (1762), I, 1

On , their position:

Our souls have grown corrupt in proportion as our sciences and arts have advanced toward perfection.

Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (1750)

On , their position:

That no citizen be rich enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.

The Social Contract, II, 11

On , their position:

The impulse of mere appetite is slavery, while obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.

The Social Contract, I, 8

On , their position:

The instant a people gives itself representatives, it is no longer free; it no longer exists.

The Social Contract, III, 15

On , their position:

To find a form of association by which each, uniting with all, still obeys only himself and remains as free as before.

The Social Contract, I, 6

On , their position:

Woe to him who has nothing left to desire! He loses, as it were, all that he possesses.

Julie, or the New Heloise, VI

On , their position:

Samyutta Nikāya1 quotations

Whatever is subject to arising is subject to ceasing.

SN 56.11, Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta

On

Śaṅkara2 quotations

Brahman is real, the world is appearance, and the self is nothing other than brahman.

verse attributed to Śaṅkara (Brahmajñānāvalīmālā)

On , their position:

It is never born and never dies; unborn, abiding, eternal, it is not slain when the body is slain.

Bhagavad Gītā, II.20, as commented by Śaṅkara

On , their position:

Sartre 10 quotations

Consciousness is a being such that in its being its being is in question insofar as this being implies a being other than itself: it is never what it is and is what it is not.

Being and Nothingness, Introduction

On , their position:

Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw all the consequences of a coherent atheist position.

Existentialism Is a Humanism

On , their position:

I cannot take my freedom as an end unless I take that of others equally as an end.

Existentialism Is a Humanism

On , their position:

Man first exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world, and defines himself afterward. If man as the existentialist conceives him is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.

Existentialism Is a Humanism

On , their position:

Man is a useless passion.

Being and Nothingness, conclusion

On , their position:

Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet nonetheless free, because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Existentialism Is a Humanism

On , their position:

Man is nothing other than the series of his acts, he is nothing other than his life.

Existentialism Is a Humanism

On , their position:

There can be no truth other, at the starting point, than this: I think, therefore I am; that is the absolute truth of consciousness attaining itself.

Existentialism Is a Humanism

On , their position:

Whatever the things I want, there will always be this possibility that things come about otherwise than I want: one must act without hope.

Existentialism Is a Humanism

On , their position:

When we say that man chooses himself, we mean that each of us chooses himself, but by that we also mean that in choosing himself he chooses all men.

Existentialism Is a Humanism

On , their position:

Schopenhauer 14 quotations

Compassion for animals is so intimately bound up with goodness of character that one may confidently assert that whoever is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

On , their position:

Every amorous attachment, however ethereal it may pretend to be, has its roots in the sexual instinct alone.

On , their position:

It is no more necessary for the saint to be a philosopher than for the philosopher to be a saint; just as it is not necessary for a perfectly beautiful person to be a great sculptor, or for a great sculptor to be a beautiful person.

On , their position:

Man is at bottom a wild and terrible animal.

On , their position:

Optimism, when it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbour nothing but words beneath their flat foreheads, seems to me not only an absurd but a truly wicked way of thinking: a bitter mockery of the unspeakable sufferings of humanity.

On , their position:

Philosophy can never do more than interpret and explain what exists.

On , their position:

So life swings like a pendulum, back and forth, between pain and boredom.

On , their position:

The act of will and the movement of the body are not two objectively known states linked by causality; they are one and the same thing.

On , their position:

The cheapest sort of pride is national pride.

On , their position:

The world is my representation.

On , their position:

This compassion alone is the actual basis of all free justice and all genuine loving-kindness.

On , their position:

To all who are still filled with the will, what remains after its complete abolition is assuredly nothing. But conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and denied itself, it is this very real world of ours, with all its suns and galaxies, that is nothing.

On , their position:

To forgive and forget is to throw out of the window precious experience that one has dearly bought.

On , their position:

You can do what you will; but at any given moment of your life you can will only one determinate thing, and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.

On , their position:

Seneca 15 quotations

A sacred spirit dwells within us, the observer and guardian of our good and our evil.

On , their position:

Cease to hope and you will cease to fear... the two march in step: anxiety follows hope.

On , their position:

Every day I plead my cause before myself... What fault of yours have you cured today?

On , their position:

He who has learned to die has unlearned slavery.

On , their position:

It is easier to banish dangerous passions than to govern them.

On , their position:

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.

On , their position:

It is not the man who has little, but the one who craves more, that is poor.

On , their position:

Misfortune is virtue's opportunity.

On , their position:

No wise man punishes because a wrong has been done, but so that no wrong be done again.

On , their position:

The highest good is a mind that despises the gifts of chance and takes joy in virtue.

On the Happy Life, IV

On , their position:

The maker and ruler of all things himself wrote the decrees of fate, but he follows them: he ordained once, he obeys forever.

On , their position:

The wise man loses nothing through any loss, for he carries all his goods within himself.

On the Constancy of the Wise Man, V

On , their position:

We are members of one great body... nature made us kin, begetting us from the same principles and for the same ends.

On , their position:

Would you call it fate? You will not be wrong. Would you call it providence? You will speak rightly. Would you call it nature? You will not sin.

Natural Questions, II, 45

On , their position:

Sextus Empiricus2 quotations

To every argument an equal argument is opposed.

On , their position:

Tranquillity followed the suspension of judgment as a shadow follows its body.

On , their position:

Socrates 5 quotations

It is not from wealth that virtue arises, but from virtue that wealth and every other good come to men.

Plato, Apology, 30b

On , their position:

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Plato, Apology, 38a

On , their position:
On , their position:

They may kill me, banish me, strip me of my rights: Anytus and Meletus can do that, but harm me they cannot.

Plato, Apology, 30c-d

On , their position:

To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.

Plato, Apology, 29a

On , their position:

What I do not know, I do not think I know either.

Plato, Apology, 21d

On , their position:

Spinoza 9 quotations

A stone receives from an external cause that pushes it a certain quantity of motion... Now conceive that this stone, while it continues to move, thinks and knows that it is striving, as far as it can, to move. This stone, surely, since it is conscious only of its striving, will believe itself entirely free.

Letter 58 to Schuller

On , their position:

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

On , their position:

Desire is the very essence of man, insofar as it is conceived as determined to do something by a given affection of itself.

On , their position:

He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return.

On , their position:

I have taken great care not to deride human actions, nor to bewail them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.

On , their position:

I shall treat human actions and appetites just as if it were a question of lines, planes, and bodies.

On , their position:

The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.

On

This kind of knowledge proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.

On , their position:

Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God.

On , their position:

The Buddha 6 quotations

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.

Dhammapada, I, 1

On , their position:

All tremble at the rod, all fear death. Putting oneself in the place of others, let none kill nor cause to kill.

Dhammapada, X, 129

On , their position:

As a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, so let one cultivate a boundless heart toward all beings.

Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta (Sutta Nipāta 1.8)

On , their position:

Form is not-self, feeling is not-self, perception is not-self, formations are not-self, consciousness is not-self.

Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya 22.59)

On , their position:

These two extremes, monks, should not be followed by one who has gone forth: the pursuit of sensual pleasure, and the pursuit of self-mortification.

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya 56.11)

On , their position:

This is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to renewed existence.

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Saṃyutta Nikāya 56.11)

On , their position:

Thomas Aquinas 6 quotations

Charity is a kind of friendship between man and God.

On , their position:

For a war to be just, three things are necessary: the authority of the sovereign, a just cause, and a rightful intention.

On , their position:

There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

Disputed Questions on Truth, q. 2, a. 3, arg. 19

On , their position:

Truth is the adequation of thing and intellect.

Disputed Questions on Truth, q. 1, a. 1

On , their position:

Ultimate and perfect beatitude can lie only in the vision of the divine essence.

On , their position:

Whatever is moved is moved by another; we must therefore arrive at a first mover moved by nothing, and this everyone understands to be God.

On , their position:

Zhuangzi 8 quotations

How do I know that what I call knowing is not really ignorance, and what I call ignorance not really knowing?

ch. 2 (On the Equality of Things)

On , their position:

I no longer look with my eyes but with my spirit, and the blade follows of itself the natural openings.

ch. 3 (The Secret of Caring for Life)

On , their position:

Life and death follow each other like day and night. Why should I grieve over it?

ch. 18 (Perfect Happiness)

On , their position:

See how the fish come out and dart about at their ease: that is the happiness of fish!

ch. 17 (Autumn Floods)

On , their position:

The perfect sage uses his heart like a mirror: he goes out to meet nothing and welcomes nothing, he responds and does not retain.

ch. 7

On , their position:

The trap is for catching fish: once the fish is caught, the trap is forgotten. Words are for grasping the idea: once the idea is grasped, the words are forgotten.

ch. 26

On , their position:

There is no place where the dao is not.

ch. 22

On , their position:

Whoever uses machines does all his work mechanically; whoever does his work mechanically grows a machine heart.

ch. 12

On , their position: