Philosophy Quotes
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319
“Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.” — Albert Camus (1913–1960) Continue reading
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318
“Geniuses are like thunderstorms. They go against the wind, terrify people, cleanse the air.” — Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Continue reading
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313
“Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.” — Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), “The Conquest of Happiness” Continue reading
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309
“Life continues, and some mornings, weary of the noise, discouraged by the prospect of the interminable work to keep after, sickened also by the madness of the world that leaps at you from the newspaper, finally convinced that I will not be equal to it and that I will disappoint everyone—all I want to do Continue reading
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308
“Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.” -Denis Diderot (1713-1784) Continue reading
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307
“How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have; they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.” -Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Either/Or Continue reading
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306
“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.” –Rene Descartes Continue reading
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304
“One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.” -Simone de Beauvoir Continue reading
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303
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” –Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), “A case of Voluntary Ignorance” Continue reading
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301
“The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.” –Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Continue reading
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300
“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” –Marie Curie (1867-1934) Continue reading
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288
“A wise man distrusts his neighbor. A wiser nan both distrusts his neighbor and himself. The wisest man of all distrusts his government.” — Taylor Caldwell (1900-1985), “The Devil’s Advocate” Continue reading
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278
“The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and a thousand other things as well.” – Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), “Reading An Essay” Continue reading
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252
“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.” ~ Iris Murdoch Continue reading
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238
“No bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there cannot be a society which does not have to employ coercive restraint.” — Leo Strauss (1899-1973), “The City and Man” Continue reading
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237
“Liberalism – it is well to recall this today–it is the supreme form of generosity, it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share the existence with the enemy more than that, with an Continue reading
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235
“Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.” — Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014), “Writing and Being” Continue reading
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234
“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.” — Roberto Bolano (1953-2003), “Last Evenings on Earth” Continue reading
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231
“Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.” – Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) Continue reading
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230
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.” -Carl Rogers (1902-1987) Continue reading
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229
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” -Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), “Man’s Search for Meaning” Continue reading
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222
“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.” -James Branch Cabell Continue reading
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221
“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” – Marting Heidegger Continue reading
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220
“What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question, one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there was little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark here was one.” -Virginia Woolf, “To Continue reading
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214
“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” – Leo Tolstoy Continue reading
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204
‘Love, friendship, and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred of something.” – Anton Chekhov Continue reading
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202
“The reading of good books is like a conversation with the best men of past centuries-in fact like a prepared conversation, in which they reveal only the best of their thoughts.” – Rene Descartes Continue reading
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201
“There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.” – G. K. Chesterton Continue reading
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196
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” Friedrich Nietzche Continue reading
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195
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil.” – Marcus Aurelius Continue reading
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194
“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.” – Virginia Woolf Continue reading
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193
In a world increasingly defined by complexity and noise, how can we cultivate an appreciation for :”bare things” and simple moments without losing sight of the broader dynamics that shape our lives? – Virginia Woolf Continue reading
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192
“How much better is silence, the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, things in themselves, myself being myself.” – Virginia Woolf Continue reading
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191
“It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.” – Aldous Huxley Continue reading
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189
“Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.” – Buddha Continue reading
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187
“Truth is the ultimate end of the whole universe.” – Thomas Aquinas Continue reading
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186
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.” – Leo Tolstoy Continue reading
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183
“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.” – Bertrand Russell Continue reading
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182
“Man is a rational – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, nut so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it.” – Bertrand Russell Continue reading
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181
“Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.” – Samuel Butler Continue reading
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180
“I must learn to love the fool in me, the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I Continue reading
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178
“There’s more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.” – John Steinbeck Continue reading
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176
“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning they distract themselves with pleasure.” – Viktor Frankl Continue reading
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173
“I may not have been sure about what did really interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.” – Albert Camus Continue reading
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169
“The only public good is that which assures the private good of the citizens.” – Simone de Beauvoir Continue reading
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168
“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.” – Euripides Continue reading
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167
“With freedom of the press, nations are not sure of going toward justice and peace. But without it, they are sure of not going there.” – Albert Camus Continue reading
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166
“I postpone death by living, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.” – Anais Nin Continue reading
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164
“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.” – Thomas Carlyle Continue reading
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163
“To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be trusted.” – George MacDonald Continue reading
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162
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.” -Carl Rogers Continue reading
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158
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the Continue reading
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157
“If you’re lonely when your alone, you’re in bad company.” – Jean-Paul Sartre Continue reading
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127
“Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me Continue reading
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106
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” -Leo Tolstoy Continue reading
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103
“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps fear of loss of power.” -John Steinbeck Continue reading
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102
“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening. I cannot even explain it to myself.” – Franz Kafka Continue reading
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Wednesday Evening Quote
“Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but “steal” some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. Continue reading
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Friday’s Quote
“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” ~ Martin Heidegger Continue reading
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Today’s Quote
“I’ve gotten a lot of comfort from the philosophy of the Roman Stoics. For me, one of the most powerful ideas of Stoicism is that you can’t pick or choose in the world what you want to happen and what you don’t want to happen, and that actually if you did get to choose, the Continue reading
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Escape
“We do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art–we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones.” ~ Anais Nin Continue reading
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Rules For Happiness
“Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.” ~ Immanuel Kant Continue reading
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January
To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June. ~Jean-Paul Sartre Continue reading
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Change
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. ~ Alan Watts Continue reading
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Opinions
“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.” ~ John Locke Continue reading
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The World We See
“The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.” ~ William James Continue reading
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Expression Of An Opinion
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if Continue reading
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Children
“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.” ~ John Locke, Philosopher, 1632 – 1704 Continue reading
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All Truth
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” ~ Arthur Schopenhauer Continue reading
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“Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.” ~ Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot, Philosopher, 1713 – 1784 Continue reading
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Independent Thinkers
“A society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young.” ~ John Dewey, Philosopher, 1859 – 1952 Continue reading
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A Higher Revelation
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soils in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents. Ludwig van Beethoven Continue reading
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Poor People
There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre Continue reading
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Pursuit Of Money
“In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.” ~ John Rawls, Philosopher, 1921 – 2002 Continue reading
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“Lawyers sometimes tell the truth. They’ll do anything to win a case.” ~Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham, Philosopher, 1748 – 1832 Continue reading
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Bricks
“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, Philosopher, 1925 – 1995 Continue reading
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Two Ways To Be Fooled
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ~ Soren Kierkegaard Continue reading
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Words
Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects. ~ Blaise Pascal Continue reading
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The Poor
The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre Continue reading
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Treasured Wealth
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. ~Henry David Thoreau Continue reading
A Pondering Mind 