Philosophical Quotes: Copy quote, explain/ extrapolate meaning, comment (agree or disagree using effective reasoning with the speaker’s argument)

1. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle

2. Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

3. Don't wait for your ship to come in - swim out to it.  ~Author Unknown

4. It’s not what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.-- Jane Austen

5. “May you live every day of your life.” ― Jonathan Swift

6. I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.Malcolm X

7. “We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged” ― Heinrich Heine

8. “Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse” ― Joseph Brodsky

9. “He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing .” ― Epicurus

10.All men by nature desire knowledge.” ― Aristotle, On Man in the Universe

11.“All the world's a stage.” ― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

12. “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

13. “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” ― Albert Camus

14. “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” ― Albert Einstein

15. “It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

16. “One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.” ― Stephen Hawking

17. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” ― Albert Einstein

18. “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.” ― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

19. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” ― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

20. “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” ― Plato

21. “A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.” ― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

22. “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” ― Frank Zappa

23. “Patient with both friends and enemies,you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself,you reconcile all beings in the world.” ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

24. “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” ― Elie Wiesel

25. “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” ― Benjamin Spock

26. “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” ― Bertrand Russell

27. “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” ― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

28. “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . . ― J.R.R. Tolkien

29 “You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.” ― Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary

30. “The past has no power over the present moment.” ― Eckhart Tolle

31. “A truth that's told with bad intentBeats all the lies you can invent.” ― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

32. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

33. “When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

34. “I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

35. “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” ― Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching

36. “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. ” ― William S. Burroughs

37. “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter” ― John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn and Other Poems

38. If you have nothing, then you have everything, because you have the freedom to do anything, without the fear of losing something.” ― Jarod Kintz,

39. “The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” ― Mark Twain

40. “A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.” ― Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

41. “We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.” ― Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday

42. “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think” ― Socrates

43. “I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. ― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

44. “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” ― Plato

45. “Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.” ― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

46. “It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

47. “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” ― Gabriel García Márquez

48. “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” ― Confucius

49. “A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein

50. “if you are in hell keep going” Winston Churchhill

51. “Do not fall before you are pushed”—unknown proverb

52. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” ― Socrates

53. “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” ― Ayn Rand

54. “I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

52. “Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien

53. “It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. ― Stephen Fry,

5 4. “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

55. “The first duty of a man is to think for himself” ― José Martí

565656“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” ― Thomas Jefferson

57. “Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.” ― Aristotle Whether you live to be 50 or 100 makes no difference, if you made no difference in the world.” ― Jarod Kintz, Great Listener Series Mute Women

58. “Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” ― Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

59. “I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. ― Harlan Ellison

60. “Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.” ― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

61. “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.” ― Albert Einstein

62. “Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

63. “I don't deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts.” ― Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

64. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” ― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

65. “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” ― Babe Ruth

66. “I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa” ― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

67. “belief is the death of intelligence.” ― Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins

68. “The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.” ― Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

69. “Happiness consists in frequent repetition of pleasure” ― Arthur Schopenhauer

70. “If you understand others you are smart.If you understand yourself you are illuminated.If you overcome others you are powerful”.

71. “Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.” ― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

72.“No one should ever ask themselves that: why am I unhappy? The question carries within it the virus that will destroy everything. ― Paulo Coelho,

73. “One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” ― Plato

74. “ a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society..” ― Erich Fromm

75. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.― Karl Marx, Eleven Theses on Feuerbach

76. “Things do not change; we change.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

77. “Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

78. “You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker” ― Malcolm X

79. “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” ― Bertrand Russell

80. “Remaining angry is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die” Unknown

81. Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference—Winston Churchhill

82. The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing” Socrates

83. Where there is love there is life. – Ghandi

84. Every deep thinker is afraid of being understood not misunderstood” Nietzsche

85. Intelligence without ambition is like a bird without wings. Salavador Dali

86. Birds of a feather flock together—Unknown

87. If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.

Maya Angelou

88. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.Maya Angelou

89. When someone shows you who they are believe them. Maya Angelou

90. An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

Winston Churchill

91. The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Winston Churchill

92. Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

William Shakespeare

93. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

94. A friend to all is a friend to none.

Aristotle

95. Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

Mark Twain

96. The lack of money is the root of all evil.Mark Twain

97. Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

John F. Kennedy

98. Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.

John F. Kennedy

99. Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.

John Adams

100. What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

Nathaniel Hawthorne

101. The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

Ernest Hemingway

102. I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.

Sophocles

103. The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Virginia Woolf

104. Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

Virginia Woolf

105. In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me. Edgar Allan Poe

106. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein

107. “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

108. “Without music, life would be a mistake.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche,

109. “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” ― Elie Wiesel

110. “Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.” ― Benjamin Franklin Wade

111. “A day without laughter is a day wasted.” ― Nicolas Chamfort

112. “Have you ever noticed how ‘What the hell’ is always the right decision to make?” ― Terry Johnson

113. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ― Anne Frank

114. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ― Margaret Mead

115. “We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” ― May Sarton

116. “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” ― Henri Bergson

117. “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” ― Frédéric Bastiat

tags: bastiat, france, government, history, liberal, libertarian, philosophy

118. “No man was ever wise by chance” ― Seneca

119. “If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

120. “The treacherous are ever distrustful.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

121. “Knowledge subverts love: in proportion as we penetrate our secrets, we come to loathe our kind, precisely because they resemble us.” ― Emil Cioran

122. “...only in the surrender of the light could the darkness prevail.” ― David Eddings, King of the Murgos

123. “The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible” ― William S. Burroughs

“That's not a bad word...hate and war are bad words, but [cursing] isn't.” ― Judy Blume, Forever

124. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.” ― George Carlin, Brain Droppings

125. “A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one.” ― Richard K. Morgan, Broken Angels

126. “If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.” ― Mo Willems, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

126. “Time is what keeps things from happening all at once.” ― Ann Brashares,

127. “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” ― G.K. Chesterton

128. “To be evenminded is the greatest virtue.Wisdom is to speakthe truth and actin keeping with its nature.” ― Heraclitus, Fragments

129. “The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure....you are above everything distressing.” ― Baruch Spinoza

130. “...when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases. ” ― Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger Volume I: Final Secret of the Illuminati

131. “The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.” ― Epicurus

132. “It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.” ― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions

133. “All religions must be tolerated... for every man must get to heaven in his own way.” ― Epictetus

134. “The only thing standing between you and your dreams is ... reluctance.” ― Carroll Bryant

135. “Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.” ― Norman Mailer

136. “I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

137. “There isnt always an explanation for everything.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

138. “Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.” ― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

139. “Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.” ― Edgar Allan Poe, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt

140. “All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.” ― Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo's Notebooks

141. “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

142. “Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.” ― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates

143. “Do you know what punishments I've endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men's most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn't tolerate my existence.” ― Brent Weeks, The Way of Shadows

144. “The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too.” ― Malcolm X

145. “Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.” ― Leon Trotsky

146. “If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.” ― Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

147. “Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.” ― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

148. “If you're gonna burn a bridge behind you, make sure you've crossed it first.” ― Quentin R. Bufogle

149. “The moment you stop trying to become a better person, is the moment you start to become worse than what you already are.” ― Carroll Bryant

150. “This place is a dream. Only a sleeper considers it real. Then death comes like dawn, and you wake up laughing at what you thought was your grief.” ― Rumi

151. “I take no pride in hopeless longing; I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.” ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

152. “Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.” ― René Descartes

153. “it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.” ― Ernest Hemingway

154. “This inhuman place makes human monsters.” ― Stephen King, The Shining

155. “Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Have Space Suit—Will Travel

156. “To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the others.” ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

157. “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” ― David Hume

158. “People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence.” ― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass / The Subtle Knife / The Amber Spyglass

159. “Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.” ― Aristotle, Poetics

160. “A prison becomes a home when you have the key.” ― George Sterling

161. “In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one.” ― Plato

162. “One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion” ― Simone de Beauvoir

163. “It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.” ― Dale Carnegie

164. “Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.” ― Vladimir Ilich Lenin

165. “Philosophy is common sense with big words.” ― James Madison

166. “When you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe one of two things: either there will be ground to stand on, or you will be given wings to fly.” ― O.R. Melling, The Summer King

167. “A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.” ― Niccolò Machiavelli, Prince

168. “Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing for the known way is an impasse.” ― Heraclitus, Fragments

169. “Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.” ― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

170. “I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen” ― René Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy

171. “Life is a game, a game you play by the rules.” ― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

172. “Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it.” ― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

173. “A bird is safe in its nest - but that is not what its wings are made for.” ― Amit Ray, World Peace: The Voice of a Mountain Bird

174.“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well....” ― René Magritte

175. “Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything.” ― Fulton J. Sheen

176. “No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.” ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

177. “The point of modernity is to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned” ― Antonio Gramsci

187. “The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. ― G.K. Chesterton

188. “I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. It is no happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life.” ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

189. “Of course there is no formula for success, except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life, and what it brings” ― Arthur Rubinstein

190. “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.” ― Plato

191. “The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.” ― Voltaire

192. “There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!” ― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

193. “Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.” ― Benjamin Franklin

194. “To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.” ― Henry David Thoreau

195. “Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.” ― Edith Sitwell

196. “Never say that I have taken it, only that I have given it back.” ― Epicurus

197. “Thoughts become things. If you see it in your mind, you will hold it in your hand.” ― Bob Proctor, You Were Born Rich

198. “Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.” ― William James,

199. “In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by...[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society.” ― Plato, Plato's Republic: The Theatre of the Mind

200. “All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks, in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche