Philosophy Quotes, Quotations and Sayings
Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward.
Soren Kierkegaard
He who runs behind truck is exhausted, he who runs in front of truck is tired.
The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water; but to walk on the earth.
Chinese Proverb
Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons – that’s philosophy.
Aldous Huxley
Man can live his truth, his deepest truth, but cannot speak it.
Archibald MacLeish
Philosophy is the science which considers truth.
Aristotle
Life is change… Growth is optional… Choose wisely…
Karen Kaiser Clark
If you want to know your past – look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future – look into your present actions.
Buddhist Saying
The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
Lao Tzu
Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum.
(I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am)
Rene Descartes
I went off to college planning to major in math or philosophy– of course, both those ideas are really the same idea.
Frank Wilczek
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
William Shakespeare
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
Helen Keller
Philosophy, rightly defined, is simply the love of wisdom.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Life, liberty and property do not exist because men made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
Frederick Bastiat
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
Plato
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
Bertrand Russell
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
William James
Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.
Socrates
Philosophy is the highest music.
Plato
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
Epictetus
One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.
Rene Descartes
I think; therefore I am.
Rene Descartes
Worry less about defining right and wrong, and more about applying what you already know. Steve
We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
Max DePree
When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.
Voltaire
Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.
Buddha
Get the hell out of my way!
Ayn Rand
True philosophy invents nothing; it merely establishes and describes what is.
Victor Cousin
If the only prayer you say in your whole life is ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
H. L. Mencken
History is philosophy teaching by example.
Dionysius
I’ve developed a new philosophy… I only dread one day at a time.
Charles Schultz
In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness… I see what people call God in all these things.
Pablo Casals
Politics is more difficult than physics.
Albert Einstein
This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
Bertrand Russell
God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing.
Rabidranath Tagore
It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
When he who hears does not know what he who speaks means, and when he who speaks does not know what he himself means, that is philosophy.
Voltaire
In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met along the way.
Havelock Ellis
It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula Le Guin
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
Bertrand Russell
Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex
Karl Marx
Philosophy is a study that lets us be unhappy more intelligently.
The Quotesjunction.com
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson
There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.
Cicero
Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki
Beauty is truth, truth beauty” – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
John Keats
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Alphonse Karr
One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes … and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Get the hell out of my way!
Ayn Rand
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.
Henry David Thoreau
Ideas without action are worthless.
Harvey Mackay
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
The eye, with which I see God, sees me; my eye and God’s eye is one eye, one seeing one realizing and one love
Meister Eckhard
Kites rise highest against the wind – not with it.
Winston Churchill
It’s not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted
Mary O’Connor
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.
Malcom X
According to the saying of an ancient philosopher, one should eat to live, and not live to eat.
Moliere
In the world to come they will not ask me, ‘why were you not Moses?’ They will ask me, ‘Why were you not Zusya.
Zusya of Hanipoli
The man of science is a poor philosopher.
Albert Einstein
What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Jesus
A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one.
Heraclitus of Ephesus
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be either good or evil.
Hannah Arendt
Philosophy, when superficially studied, excites doubt; when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
Francis Bacon
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection; the water has no mind to receive their image.
Zenrin poem
Let no one delay the study of philosophy while young nor weary of it when old.
Epicurus