Philosophy quotes

1363 quotes

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Henry David Thoreau

The great question of our time is, ‚Will we be motivated by materialistic philosophy or by spiritual power?‘

Billy Graham

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

Bertrand Russell

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

Pope Francis

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Henry David Thoreau

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours.

Lao Tzu

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

Billy Graham

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

William Shakespeare

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

Christopher Hitchens

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

H. L. Mencken

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Henry David Thoreau

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

Benjamin Disraeli

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Henry David Thoreau

Nothing can come of nothing.

William Shakespeare

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

Billy Graham

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

Lao Tzu

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Henry David Thoreau

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Bertrand Russell

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

H. L. Mencken

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

William Shakespeare

In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that have germinated in it and have left it, leaving behind them only a trifling, infinitesimal part of their riches.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Henry David Thoreau

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

H. L. Mencken

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

Bertrand Russell

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

Bertrand Russell

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

Thomas Jefferson

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Bertrand Russell

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

Thomas Sowell

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

Christopher Hitchens

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

Bertrand Russell

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

Joyce Meyer

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

Maya Angelou

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

Henry David Thoreau

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

George Eliot

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

Thomas Jefferson

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

Christopher Hitchens

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

William Shakespeare

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

Bertrand Russell

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

Christopher Hitchens

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Lao Tzu

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

Lao Tzu

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

William Shakespeare

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Henry David Thoreau

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Henry David Thoreau

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

Lao Tzu