#philosophy
579 quotes
“in the course of, and through comparison”
“The sociologist influencing Labour's new generation”
“The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.”
“Once governments exclude people you can stop them from being protected. Societies begin to manipulate fears about groups. When the welfare state is in crisis we have to be concerned about such a feature of [society]”
“A good society is a society which believes that it is not good enough; that it is the task of the collectivity to insure individuals against individually suffered misfortune; and that the quality of society is measured by the quality of life of its weakest, just like the carrying power of a bridge is measured by its weakest pillar. Quoted in "Ziggy Stardust" , New Humanist”
“Professor with a past”
“What did that involve, exactly?”
“[After an article by Bogdan Musiał was published in Poland alleging Bauman had worked for the Polish secret service] The fact that I for three years cooperated with intelligence”
“[Following the second world war] If you looked at the political spectrum in Poland at that time, the Communist party promised the best solution. Its political programme was the most fitting for the issues which Poland faced. And I was completely dedicated. Communist ideas were just a continuation of the Enlightenment.”
“Passion and pessimism”
“Science tells us how to heal and how to kill ; it reduces the death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war ; but only wisdom”
“The rise of philosophy, then, often heralds the decay of a civilization. Speculation begins with nature and begets naturalism; it passes to man”
“The invention and spread of contraceptives is the proximate cause of our changing morals . The old moral code restricted sexual experience to marriage, because copulation could not be effectively separated from parentage, and parentage could be made responsible only through marriage. But to”
“What is Civilization?”
“To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves ; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say. We Have a Right To Be Happy Today , commencement address at the Webb School of Claremont, California”
“The Gentle Philosopher”
“Durants on History from the Ages, with Love,”
“Teachers: The Essence of the Centuries”
“The Second Sexual Revolution”
“I felt more keenly than before the need of a philosophy that would do justice to the infinite vitality of nature . In the inexhaustible activity of the atom, in the endless resourcefulness of plants, in the teeming fertility of animals, in the hunger and movement of infants, in the laughter and play of children , in the love and devotion of youth, in the restless ambition of fathers and the lifelong sacrifice of mothers, in the undiscourageable researches of scientists and the sufferings of genius , in the crucifixion of prophets and the martyrdom of saints”
“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
“We should be considerate to the living; to the dead we owe only the truth.”
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
“Virtue is debased by self-justification.”
“If I had had more time, this letter would have been shorter. Written by Voltaire in an over”
“Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the body.”
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
“Thoughts, remarks and observations”
“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
“Common sense is not so common.”
“Me han sido reveladas semejantes cosas que lo que he escrito me parece paja”
“La inconstancia es un pecado especial de la prudencia”
“Justicia sin misericordia es crueldad”
“La propia naturaleza no puede errar ...”
“La elocuencia es poder, porque tiene aspecto de prudencia”
“El hombre es un lobo para el hombre”
“De la igualdad de habilidades surge la igualdad de esperanzas en el logro de nuestros fines”
“The reason, however, why the philosopher may be likened to the poet is this: both are concerned with the marvellous. Commentary on the Metaphysics (c. 1270”
“It must be said that charity can, in no way, exist along with mortal sin. Quaestiones disputatae: De caritate”
“Charity, by which God and neighbor are loved, is the most perfect friendship. Quaestiones disputatae: De caritate”
“Reason in man is rather like God in the world. Opuscule II, De Regno”
“Anything done against faith or conscience is sinful. Commentary on Romans , cap 14, I 3”
“O saving Victim, opening wide The gate of heaven to man below, Our foes press on from every side, Thine aid supply, Thy strength bestow. Verbum Supernum Prodiens (hymn for Lauds on Corpus Christi), stanza 5”
“Thus Angels' Bread is made The Bread of man today: The Living Bread from Heaven With figures doth away : O wondrous gift indeed! The poor and lowly may Upon their Lord and Master feed. Sacris Solemniis Juncta Sint Gaudia (Matins hymn for Corpus Christi), stanza 6”
“Down in adoration falling, Lo! the sacred Host we hail; Lo! o'er ancient forms departing, Newer rites of grace prevail; Faith for all defects supplying, Where the feeble senses fail. Pange, Lingua , stanza 5”
“Pange, Lingua (hymn for Vespers on the Feast of Corpus Christi), stanza 1”
“Pange, lingua, gloriosi Corporis mysterium Sanguinisque pretiosi, Quem in mundi pretium Fructus ventris generosi Rex effudit gentium. Sing, my tongue, the Savior's glory, Of His Flesh the mystery sing; Of the Blood, all price exceeding, Shed by our immortal King.”
“A multitude of words is no proof of a prudent mind.”
“What is God? That which has neither beginning nor end.”
“Time is the wisest of all things that are; for it brings everything to light.”
“Hope is the only good that is common to all men.”
“Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.”
“The past is certain, the future is obscure.”
“All things are full of gods.”
“Water is the principle, or the element, of things.”
“The greatest thing is to be content with what you have.”
“The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.”
“Una multitud de palabras no es prueba de una mente prudente.”
“El pasado es cierto, el futuro es incierto.”
“El agua es el principio de todas las cosas.”
“La grandeza es estar contento con lo que tienes.”
“Theaetetus , 161b”
“ἐγὼ δὲ οὐδὲν ἐπίσταμαι πλέον πλὴν βραχέος, ὅσον λόγον παρ᾽ ἑτέρου σοφοῦ λαβεῖν καὶ ἀποδέξασθαι μετρίως. I myself know nothing, except just a little, enough to extract an argument from another man who is wise and to receive it fairly.”
“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. Theaetetus , 155d”
“Nothing is to be preferred before justice”
“Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to be regarded in the eyes of the gods and of men of understanding? Crito”
“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him. Plato, Crito 49c”
“Oh dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him. Socrates' prayer, Phaedrus , 279”
“In every one of us there are two ruling and directing principles, whose guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired judgment which aspires after excellence. Phaedrus”
“It would be better for me... that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself. Gorgias , 482c”
“I only wish that wisdom were the kind of thing that flowed ... from the vessel that was full to the one that was empty. Plato , Symposium , 175d”
“A Dialogue with Simone de Beauvoir,”
“I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth”
“But presently I began to bubble with happiness. No, my daughters' absence did not sadden me at all”
“What is an adult? A child puffed with age. The Woman Destroyed [ La Femme rompue ]”
“It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself... It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do”
“Une Mort Très Douce (1964) translated by Patrick O'Brian as A Very Easy Death (1965) last words”
“Il n'y a pas de mort naturelle: rien de ce qui arrive à l'homme n'est jamais naturel puisque sa présence met le monde en question. Tous les hommes sont mortels: mais pour chaque homme sa mort est un accident et, même s'il la connaît et y consent, une violence indue. There is no such thing as a natural death : nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die; but for every man his death is an accident and even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.”
“The Communists , following Hegel , speak of humanity and its future as of some monolithic individuality. I was attacking this illusion. On her work All Men are Mortal in Force of Circumstances (1963), p. 73”
“His personal prestige, his qualities, his competence assure him a preponderant role however; since 1927 he has been above all the unchallenged specialist on peasant question. But the power he exercises is no more dictatorial than, for example, Roosevelt 's was. New China's Constitution renders impossible the concentration of authority in one man's hands; the country is governed by a team whose members have been united through a long common struggle and by a close friendship. On Mao Zedong , in The Long March . World Publishing Company. 1958. p. 427.”
“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom . The Blood of Others [ Le sang des autres ]”
“A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.”
“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
“If a man knows not which port he sails, no wind is favorable.”
“The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
“Seneca the Younger”
“Seneca the Elder”
“There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves. 17 January 1837”
“There is a contrast of primary significance between Augustine and Pelagius. The former crushes everything in order to rebuild it again. The other addresses himself to man as he is. The first system, therefore, in respect to Christianity, falls into three stages: creation”
“One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states). How many people are just adjectives, interjections, conjunctions, adverbs? How few are substantives, active verbs, how many are copulas? Human relations are like the irregular verbs in a number of languages where nearly all verbs are irregular. Journals A 126”
“I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul ; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away”
“in order to see and observe,”
“How close men, despite all their knowledge, usually live to madness? What is truth but to live for an idea? When all is said and done, everything is based on a postulate; but not until it no longer stands on the outside, not until one lives in it, does it cease to be a postulate. (Dialectic”
“It occurs to me that artists go forward by going backward, something which I have nothing against intrinsically when it is a reproduced retreat”
“What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. Journal entry, Gilleleie (1 August 1835) Journals 1A; this is considered to be one of the earliest statements of existentialist thought.”
“It will be easy for us once we receive the ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many are there who plunge into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution? Journal entry, August 1, 1835”
“The reason I cannot really say that I positively enjoy nature is that I do not quite realize what it is that I enjoy. A work of art, on the other hand, I can grasp. I can”
“Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity. Parnassus (1874) Preface”
“A mollusk is a cheap edition [of man] with a suppression of the costlier illustrations, designed for dingy circulation, for shelving in an oyster”
“Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever. From a lecture on Books given in the Fraternity Course in Boston in 1864; the quoted phrase 'glittering generalities' had been used by Rufus Choate to describe the declaration of the rights of man in the Preamble to the Constitution”
“The clergy are as like as peas. "The Preacher", in The Index: A Weekly Paper (Feb. 5, 1880) pp. 62”
“Always put the best interpretation on a tenet. Why not on Christianity, wholesome, sweet, and poetic? It is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a trutn”
“If the colleges were better, if they ... had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents,”
“God may consent, but not forever.”
“Walter Savage Landor”
“I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders. Letter to Thomas Carlyle”
“He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses. The Method of Nature (1841), p. 25”
“I know how reluctant it makes us feel to give any credit for humanity to the western civilisation when we observe the brutalities into which this nationalism of theirs breaks out, instances of which are so numerous all the world over,”
“Nationalism in the West”
“The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings. Letter to Lord Chelmsford, Viceroy of India, renouncing his knighthood in protest of the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre .”
“Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend.”
“When the other person understands that I am not trying to enslave him, or not forcing him to do things against his will, he will surely understand I am doing what every human should do unto another. He will understand that with “ Bande Mataram ” we are worshipping a motherland whose children are the great and the small. Then, we will not insult or demean anyone through our attitudes, words and thoughts whether Muslim or lower caste, Bihari or Oriya, English educated or not”
“Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live. I took a few steps down that road and stopped; for when I cannot retain my faith in universal man standing over and above my country, when patriotic prejudices overshadow my God, I feel inwardly starved. 1908 letter to Aurobindo Mohan Bose, quoted in Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore , Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson”
“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
“I cannot but bring to your mind those days when the whole of Eastern Asia, from Burma to Japan was united with India in the closest ties of friendship... Rabindranath Tagore, Essays, Nationalism in Japan, Atlantic Publishers & Dist, 2007 p.471, and quoted in A Look at India From the Views of Other Scholars, by Stephen Knapp [1]”
“To know my country one has to travel to that age, when she realized her soul and thus transcended her physical boundaries when she revealed her being in a radiant magnanimity which illumined the eastern horizon, making her recognized as their own by those in alien shores who were awakened into a surprise of life.”
“It was indeed a great day not only for the Sikhs but also for the whole of India when Guru Govinda , defying the age”
“As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 23”
“ἐν ὀργῇ μήτε τι λέγειν μήτε πράσσειν In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.”
“As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 23, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 320”
“ἀλλήλοις θ᾽ ὁμιλεῖν, ὡς τοὺς μὲν φίλους ἐχθροὺς μὴ ποιῆσαι, τοὺς δ᾽ ἐχθροὺς φίλους ἐργάσασθαι. ἴδιόν τε μηδὲν ἡγεῖσθαι. We ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies.”
“As reported by Alexander Polyhistor , and Diogenes Laërtius in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 30, in the translation of C. D. Yonge”
“Τὴν δ' ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴν διῃρῆσθαι τριχῆ, εἴς τε νοῦν καὶ φρένας καὶ θυμόν. νοῦν μὲν οὖν καὶ θυμὸν εἶναι καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις ζῴοις, φρένας δὲ μόνον ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ. The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence , reason , and passion . Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone.”
“Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine , And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine. As reported by Heraclides, son of Sarapion, and Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 7, in the translation of C. D. Yonge”
“By the air which I breathe, and by the water which I drink, I will not endure to be blamed on account of this discourse. As reported by Heraclides Ponticus ( c . 360 BC), and Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 6, in the translation of C. D. Yonge”
“I was at Euphorbus at the siege of Troy.”
“I was Euphorbus at the siege of Troy. As reported by Heraclides Ponticus ( c . 360 BC), and Diogenes Laërtius ( Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 4), and quoted in Cosmic Optimism: A Study of the Interpretation of Evolution (1949) by Frederick William Conner”
“I do see one large and grievous kind of ignorance, separate from the rest, and as weighty as all the other parts put together. Thinking that one knows a thing when one does not know it. Through this, I believe, all the mistakes of the mind are caused in all of us. 229c”
“Neither perception nor true opinion, nor reason or explanation combined with true opinion could be knowledge… Then our art of midwifery declare to us that all the offspring that have been born are mere wind”
“Perception and knowledge could never be the same. 186e”
“They do not know the penalty of unrighteousness, which is the thing they most ought to know. For it is not what they think it is”
“It is impossible that evils should be done away with, for there must always be something opposed to the good; and they… must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this earth. Therefore we ought to try to escape from earth to the dwelling of the gods as quickly as we can; and to escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible… God is in no wise and in no manner unrighteous, but utterly and perfectly righteous, and there is nothing so like him as that one of us who in turn becomes most nearly perfect in righteousness. 176a”
“Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. 155d, The Dialogues of Plato , Volume 3, 1871, p. 377”
“No man of sense can put himself and his soul under the control of names... You must consider courageously and thoroughly and not accept anything carelessly. 440c”
“If the very essence of knowledge changes, at the moment of the change to another essence of knowledge there would be no knowledge, and if it is always changing, there will always be no knowledge, and by this reasoning there will be neither anyone to know nor anything to be known. But if there is always that which knows and that which is known”
“of the soul , their notion being that the soul is buried in the present life ; and again, because by its means the soul gives any signs which it gives, it is for this reason also properly called”
“I shall assume that your silence gives consent . 435b”
“El principio es la mitad de todo”
“El hombre es mortal por sus temores e inmortal por sus deseos”
“El alma es un acorde; la disonancia, su enfermedad”
“Con orden y tiempo se encuentra el secreto de hacerlo todo, y de hacerlo bien”
“A Tale of Two Gardens”
“We are condemned”
“Brotherhood: Homage to Claudius Ptolemy”
“I am a man: little do I last”
“Between going and staying the day wavers,”
“Motion", as translated by Eliot Weinberger, in Collected Poems 1957”
“If you are the amber mare”
“To fight evil is to fight ourselves. Itinerary”
“Only now have I understood that there was a secret relationship between what I have called my expulsion from the present and the writing of poetry . Poetry is in love with the instant and seeks to relive it in the poem, thus separating it from sequential time and turning it into a fixed present. But at that time I wrote without wondering why I was doing it. I was searching for the gateway to the present: I wanted to belong to my time and to my century. A little later this obsession became a fixed idea: I wanted to be a modern poet. My search for modernity had begun. Nobel Lecture”
“There can be no society without poetry , but society can never be realized as poetry, it is never poetic. Sometimes the two terms seek to break apart. They cannot. "Signs in Rotation" (1967) in The Bow and the Lyre : The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History (1973) as translated by Ruth L.C. Simms, p. 249”
“The Responsibility of Intellectuals”
“responsibility of people,”
“sense of utter irresponsibility”
“A Review of B. F. Skinner 's Verbal Behavior”
“The Legitimacy of Violence as a Political Act? Noam Chomsky debates with Hannah Arendt, Susan Sontag, et al.”
“There are many facts about language and linguistic behavior that require explanation beyond the fact that such and such a string (which no one may ever have produced) is or is not a sentence. It is reasonable to expect grammars to provide explanations for some of these facts. Chap. 8 : The Explanatory Power of Linguistic Theory”
“Despite the undeniable interest and importance of semantic and statistical studies of language, they appear to have no direct relevance to the problem of determining or characterizing the set of grammatical utterances. I think that we are forced to conclude that grammar is autonomous and independent of meaning, and that probabilistic models give no particular insight into some of the basic problems of syntactic structure. Chap. 2 : The Independence of Grammar”
“We can determine the adequacy of a linguistic theory by developing rigorously and precisely the form of grammar corresponding to the set of levels contained within this theory, and then investigating the possibility of constructing simple and revealing grammars of this form for natural languages. Chap. 1 : Introduction”
“Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis. Chap. 1 : Introduction”
“The search for rigorous formulation in linguistics has a much more serious motivation than mere concern for logical niceties or the desire to purify well”
“I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
“Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα, δε φοβούμαι τίποτα, είμαι λεύτερος.”
“This is what I want!”
“You gave me your curse, holy Fathers. I give you a blessing: May you be as moral and religious as I am. In response to attempts by leaders of the Greek Orthodox church to anathematize him, as quoted in God's Struggler: Religion in the Writings of Nikos Kazantzakis (1996) by Darren J. N. Middleton and Peter Bien, p. 12”
“I said to the almond tree: "Speak to me of God." And the almond tree blossomed. The Fratricides (1961), epigraph”
“All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind. "Odyssey of Faith" in TIME magazine”
“We, who are dying, are doing better, than they, who will live. For Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal. Freedom and Death (1956), ch. 13”
“God, what is all this talk put out by the popes? Paradise is here, my good man. God, give me no other paradise! Freedom and Death (1956), ch. 3”
“We are not simple people who believe in happiness; nor weaklings who crumple to the ground in distress at the first reverse; nor skeptics observing the bloody effort of marching humanity from the lofty heights of a mocking, sterile wit. Believing in the fight, though we entertain no illusions about it, we are armed against every disappointment. Toda Raba (1934), ch. 10”
“I am a mariner of Odysseus with heart of fire but with mind ruthless and clear. Toda Raba (1934), quoted in Kimon Friar's introduction to The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1958), p. xxvi”
“When I was a student in the 1950s, I read Husserl, Sartre, Merleau”
“I'm very proud that some people think that I'm a danger for the intellectual health of students. When people start thinking of health in intellectual activities, I think there is something wrong. In their opinion I am a dangerous man, since I am a crypto”
“I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being. Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault”
“Friendship as a Way of Life,”
“Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual”
“Dits et Écrits 1954”
“Marxism exists in nineteenth”
“Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write. The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith”
“[T]ruly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti”
“We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another. Michel Foucault, quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee”
“ie, by beings. Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. Those who idolize”
“Introduction to Metaphysics”
“This Europe , which in its ruinous blindness is forever on the point of cutting its own throat, lies today in a great pincers, squeezed between Russia on one side and America on the other. From a metaphysical point of view, Russia and America are the same: the same dreary technological frenzy, the same unrestricted organization of the average man...”
“What is peddled about nowadays as philosophy, especially that of N.S. [National Socialism], but has nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of that movement [namely the encounter between global technology and modern humanity] is nothing but fishing in that troubled sea of values and totalities. Introduction to Metaphysics”
“cur aliquid potius extiterit quam nihil .”
“What is Metaphysics? (1929), p. 110”
“Warum ist überhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts? Das ist die Frage. Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing? That is the question.”
“Transcendence constitutes selfhood. Essence of Ground”
“The desire to philosophize from the standpoint of standpointlessness, as a purportedly genuine and superior objectivity, is either childish, or, as is usually the case, disingenuous. The Essence of Truth, 1931”
“( Grundfragen der Philosophie: Ausgewählte”
“Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence. (Hays translation) This that I am, whatever it be, is mere flesh and a little breathe and the ruling Reason”
“γεγόναμεν γὰρ πρὸς συνεργίαν ὡς πόδες, ὡς χεῖρες, ὡς βλέφαρα, ὡς οἱ στοῖχοι τῶν ἄνω καὶ κάτω ὀδόντων. τὸ οὖν ἀντιπράσσειν ἀλλήλοις παρὰ φύσιν. We are all made for mutual assistance, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids, as the rows of the upper and under teeth, from whence it follows that clashing and opposition is perfectly unnatural. II, 1”
“Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill. II, 1”
“Ἕωθεν προλέγειν ἑαυτῷ: συντεύξομαι περιέργῳ, ἀχαρίστῳ, ὑβριστῇ, δολερῷ, βασκάνῳ, ἀκοινωνήτῳ: πάντα ταῦτα συμβέβηκεν ἐκείνοις παρὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ κακῶν. 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.”
“He was a man who looked at what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts. I, 16”
“Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love. (Hays translation) I, 9”
“Of Fronto, to how much envy and fraud and hypocrisy the state of a tyrannous king is subject unto, and how they who are commonly called [Eupatridas Gk.], i.e. nobly born, are in some sort incapable, or void of natural affection. I, 8”
“From Apollonius , true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always..that it was possible for the same man to be both vehement and remiss: a man not subject to be vexed, and offended with the incapacity of his scholars and auditors in his lectures and expositions. I, 5”
“Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived”
“Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion... I have learned both shamefastness and manlike behaviour. Of my mother I have learned to be religious, and bountiful; and to forbear, not only to do, but to intend any evil; to content myself with a spare diet, and to fly all such excess as is incidental to great wealth. I, 1”
“El perseguir imposibles es locura. Y es imposible que los malvados no cometan tales acciones”
“Cuando el dolor es insoportable, nos destruye; cuando no nos destruye, es que es soportable”
“Antes de empezar a hablar , procura que en tu rostro pueda leerse lo que vas a decir”
“Lo que se deja expresar, debe ser dicho de forma clara; sobre lo que no se puede hablar, es mejor callar”
“La imagen es un hecho”
“El mundo es todo lo que sucede [...] la totalidad de los hechos, no de las cosas”
“Music is the language of the spirit.”
“Let there be spaces in your togetherness.”
“Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.”
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls.”
“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”
“The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.”
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
“Work is love made visible.”
“The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.”
“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life longing for itself.”
“History is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends. The Holy Family , Ch. VI (1845).”
“The only possible solution which will preserve Germany's honor and Germany's interest is, we repeat, a war with Russia. Marx”
“Reason has always existed, but not always in a rational form. Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge”
“It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair”
“And your education ! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.”
“The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. As quoted in the Communist Manifesto (1848) p. 7”
“The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles. As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (1848), p.2”
“Les Cahiers d'études de Karl Marx (1840”
“With disdain I will throw my gauntlet”
“Thus heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God , is chosen for hell . “The Pale Maiden” (1837) ballad”
“Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the use of reason, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity. What is Enlightenment? (1784)”
“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life”
“Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. What is Enlightenment? (1784)”
“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but of how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness. Critique of Practical Reason (1788)”
“Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law”
“All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason. Critique of Pure Reason (1781)”
“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)”
“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play”
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Conclusion”
“Have the courage to use your own reason”
“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”
“Interview with El País (2002); cited in Princípios (Editora Anita Garibaldi, 2002), p. 88; English translation taken from Phillips The World Turned Upside Down (2010), p. 207.”
“Sometimes I say that writing a novel is the same as constructing a chair: a person must be able to sit in it, to be balanced on it. If I can produce a great chair, even better. But above all I have to make sure that it has four stable feet. Interview with Katherine Vaz, José Saramago , BOMB Magazine , June 2001.”
“On the idea for his next novel ( Blindness ), which came to him while sitting in a restaurant; New York Times interview with Alan Riding (1998), as quoted in Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies , 6th Edition (Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture, 2001), p. 131.”
“Um dia, sentado à mesa, pensei: E se fôssemos todos cegos? Imediatamente me veio a resposta: Nós somos todos cegos. The question suddenly came into my head, 'And if we were all blind?' And then immediately, as if answering myself, 'But we are all blind.'”
“Interview Programa Jô Soares , 1997.”
“Não é a pornografia que é obscena, é a fome que é obscena It is not pornography that is obscene, it is hunger that is obscene.”
“A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book, when I finished: 'This is a book about Alentejo'. Quoted in José Saramago: il bagaglio dello scrittore , page 41, by Giulia Lanciani, published by Bulzoni, 1996 ISBN 8871199332 , 9788871199337 (256 pages).”
“Deus é o silêncio do universo, e o homem o grito que dá um sentido a esse silêncio. God is the silence of the universe, and man is the cry that gives meaning to that silence. Lanzarote Notebooks (1990), quoted in The Notebook , entry for 9 October 2008.”
“Interview in Idéias , no. 107 (15 October 1988), trans. Margaret Jull Costa .”
“It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak. On Liberty”
“There are but few points in which the English, as a people, are entitled to the moral pre”
“That power should be exercised over any portion of mankind without any obligation of consulting them, is only tolerable while they are in an infantine, or a semi”
“The possession and the exercise of political, and among others of electoral, rights, is one of the chief instruments both of moral and of intellectual training for the popular mind; and all governments must be regarded as extremely imperfect, until every one who is required to obey the laws, has a voice, or the prospect of a voice, in their enactment and administration. Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859), p. 22”
“Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer 'immoral,' let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned. Dr. Whewell on Moral Philosophy (1852), in Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical , vol. 2, London: John W. Parker and son, 1859, p. 485”
“A Turk thinks, or used to think (for even Turks are wiser now”
“All students of man and society who possess that first requisite for so difficult a study, a due sense of its difficulties, are aware that the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for true, as of mistaking part of the truth for the whole. “Coleridge”. London and Westminster Review.”
“The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle. ¶ The very corner”
“The remedies for all our diseases will be discovered long after we are dead; and the world will be made a fit place to live in, after the death of most of those by whose exertions it will have been made so. It is to be hoped that those who live in those days will look back with sympathy to their known and unknown benefactors. Diary, April 15, 1854, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill , Toronto, 1988, vol. 27, p. 668”
“The Spirit of the Age, I”
“For wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer Justice, it is still violence and injury, however colour'd with the Name, Pretences, or Forms of Law, the end whereof being to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, War is made upon the Sufferers, who having no appeal on Earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such Cases, an appeal to Heaven. Two Treatises of Government. The Second Treatise. Chapter 3: The State of War, §20 p. 281 books.google”
“Unknown text by John Locke reveals roots of 'foundational democratic ideas'”
“Discourse of Port de Set with P. & Mr. [blank] at Petit Paris, & the teaching biding to cheat the Hugenots: Nulla fides servanda cum Hereticis, nisi satis validi sunt ad se defendendos [faith need not be kept with heretics]. Journal entry (25 January 1676), quoted in John Lough (ed.), Locke's Travels in France 1675”
“Sophistry is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance.”
“Hand Book : Caution and Counsels”
“To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world , and the seed”
“The good King of France desires only that you would take his word and let him be quiet till he has got the West Indies into his hands and his grandson well established in Spain, and then you may be sure you shall be as safe as he will let you be in your religion, property and trade, to all which who can be such an infidel as not to believe him a great friend? Letter to Peter King (5 April 1701), quoted in Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957; 1985), p. 452”
“But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression . A Letter Concerning Toleration”
“Wit and good nature meeting in a fair young lady as they do in you make the best resemblance of an angel that we know; and he that is blessed with the conversation and friendship of a person so extraordinary enjoys all that remains of paradise in this world. Letter to Mary Clarke (7 May 1682), quoted in Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957; 1985), p. 221”
“The three great things that govern mankind are reason, passion and superstition. The first governs a few, the two last share the bulk of mankind and possess them in their turns. But superstition most powerfully produces the greatest mischief. Journal entry (16 May 1681), quoted in Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957; 1985), p. 200”
“The determination of the mot juste , of the right incident in the right place, of exquisiteness of proportion, of the precise tone, hue, and shade that helps unify the whole while it defines a part, is accomplished by emotion. Not every emotion, however, can do this work, but only one informed by material that is grasped and gathered. Emotion is informed and carried forward when it is spent indirectly in search for material and in giving it order, not when it is directly expended. p. 73”
“Just because emotion is essential to that act of expression which produces a work of art, it is easy for inaccurate analysis to misconceive its mode of operation and conclude that the work of art has emotion for its significant content. One may cry out with joy or even weep upon seeing a friend from whom one has been long separated. The outcome is not an expressive object”
“So we are always esthetically disappointed when the sensuous qualities and the intellectual properties of an object do not coalesce. p. 7”
“This intelligence”
“Democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail. Democracy and Human Nature , Freedom and Culture”
“Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies. The American Background , Freedom and Culture”
“The Need for a New Party”
“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. The Quest for Certainty (1929), Ch. XI”
“While they denounce as subversive anarchy signs of independent thought, of thinking for themselves on the part of others lest such thought disturb the conditions by which they profit, they think quite literally for themselves, that is of themselves. Human Nature and Conduct (1921) Part 1 Section IV.”
“The Need of an Industrial Education in an Industrial Democracy,”
“Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind; Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm, Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm. Who rides, so late, through night and wind? It is the father with his child. He holds the boy in the crook of his arm He holds him safe, he keeps him warm. Der Erlkönig”
“When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash. Letter to Johann Kaspar Lavatar”
“Getting along with women, Knocking around with men, Having more credit than money, Thus one goes through the world. Claudine von Villa Bella”
“One lives but once in the world . Clavigo , Act I, sc. i”
“I hold to faith in the divine love”
“Alternative translation: So certain is it that he alone is great and happy, who requires neither to command nor to obey, in order to secure his being of some importance in the world. Götz von Berlichingen , Act I (1773), p. 39”
“So gewiß ist der allein glücklich und groß, der weder zu herrschen noch zu gehorchen braucht, um etwas zu sein! He alone is great and happy who fills his own station of independence, and has neither to command nor to obey.”
“Wo viel Licht ist, ist starker Schatten. There is strong shadow where there is much light . Götz von Berlichingen , Act I”
“Correction does much, but encouragement does more.”
“Instruction does much, but encouragement everything. Letter to A. F. Oeser (9 November 1768), Early and miscellaneous letters of J. W. Goethe, including letters to his mother. With notes and a short biography”
“What I see is teeming cohesion, contained dispersal.... For him, to sculpt is to take the fat off space. On Alberto Giacometti 's work, Situations , in Braziller”
“A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words. Refusing the Nobel Prize , New York Times”
“Marxism and Subjectivity”
“Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,”
“To choose this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good , and nothing can be good for us without being good for all. Existentialism and Human Emotions”
“Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind. Existentialism and Human Emotions”
“On the Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg ,”
“He yawned. He had finished the day and he had also finished with his youth. Various well”
“He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being. L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason )”
“Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom . L'imagination ( Imagination: A Psychological Critique )”
“Julie, or The New Heloise (English), Part Six, Letter VII Response, pg 560”
“Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (French), Sixième partie, Lettre VII Réponse”
“Chère amie, ne savez”
“Days of absence, sad and dreary, Clothed in sorrow's dark array,”
“A country cannot subsist well without liberty , nor liberty without virtue . As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards , p. 301.”
“An honest man nearly always thinks justly. As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards , p. 277.”
“English translation as quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards , p. 2.”
“L'accent est l'âme du discours. Accent is the soul of language ; it gives to it both feeling and truth.”
“All that time is lost which might be better employed. As quoted in A Dictionary of Quotations in Most Frequent Use: Taken Chiefly from the Latin and French, but comprising many from the Greek, Spanish, and Italian Languages, translated into English (1809) by David Evans Macdonnel”
“Let's go dance under the elms: Step lively, young lassies. Let's go dance under the elms: Gallants, take up your pipes. Le devin du village”
“Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they only have themselves to think of, so every wish and every notion assume importance; every pleasure is tasted to the full, but also every sorrow, and many who find that their wishes cannot be fulfilled, immediately put an end to their lives. p. 32”
“Was that really love? I saw all these passionate people reel about and drift haphazardly as if driven by a storm, the man filled with desire today, satiated on the morrow, loving fiercely and discarding brutally, sure of no affection and happy in no love... p. 88”
“That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged”
“I was given the freedom to discover my own inclination and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength. p. 4”
“Once my world was full of friends,”
“Sadness when there should be Joy , hatred when there should be love show compassion because we can be more because we both have scars and pain that no one will ever understand but us so be with me not against me and bring us where we were happy and free .”
“That's the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer , and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die !”
“Oh, love isn't there to make us happy . I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.”
“In the beginning was the myth . God , in his search for self”
“The marvel of the Bhagavad”
“From Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, Book IX, section 8”
“τὴν μεταβολὴν ὁδὸν ἄνω κάτω, τόν τε κόσμον γίνεσθαι κατ' αὐτήν. Change he called a pathway up and down, and this determines the birth of the world.”
“As quoted by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics , Book II”
“χαλεπώτερον ἡδονῇ μάχεσθαι ἢ θυμῷ It is harder to fight against pleasure than against anger.”
“As quoted in Plato, Cratylus , 402a”
“δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης. You could not step twice into the same river.”
“As quoted by Plato in Cratylus , 402a”
“πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει Everything changes and nothing stands still.”
“As quoted by Plato in Cratylus , 401d”
“τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν All entities move and nothing remains still.”
“Ha de luchar el pueblo por su ley, igual que por su muralla”
“En la circunferencia se confunden el principio y el fin”
“El camino que sube y bajo es uno y el mismo”
“Aprender muchas cosas no nutre la inteligencia”
“Slavery in Massachusetts”
“Talk of mysteries!”
“When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man? Letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson”
“Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough, What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town, If juster battles are enacted now Between the ants upon this hummock's crown? "The Summer Rain", st. 3. The Dial (October 1842) p. 224”
“My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read, 'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, And will not mind to hit their proper targe. "The Summer Rain", st. 1. The Dial (October 1842) p. 224”
“The life that I aspire to live No man proposeth me”
“Great God , I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye. "Prayer", st. 1. The Dial (July 1842) p. 79”
“Natural History of Massachusetts”
“But now I see I was not plucked for naught, And after in life's vase Of glass set while I might survive, But by a kind hand brought Alive To a strange place. "Sic Vita", st. 6. The Dial (July 1841) p. 82”
“I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their links Were made so loose and wide, Methinks, For milder weather. "Sic Vita", st. 1. The Dial (July 1841) p. 81”
“The spectacle of what religions have been in the past, of what certain religions still are to”
“Why did we obey? The question hardly occurred to us. We had formed the habit of deferring to our parents and teachers. All the same we knew very well that it was because they were our parents, because they were our teachers. Therefore, in our eyes, their authority came less from themselves than from their status in relation to us Chapter I: Moral Obligation”
“The remembrance of forbidden fruit is the earliest thing in the memory of each of us, as it is in that of mankind. Chapter I: Moral Obligation”
“Intuition is a method of feeling one's way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it. Quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887”
“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”
“Je dirais qu'il faut agir en homme de pensée et penser en homme d'action. I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action . Speech at the Descartes Conference in Paris”
“L’intuition philosophique”
“All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant , man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity , in space and in time , is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death . Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter III. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911, p. 271”
“The present contains nothing more than the past , and what is found in the effect was already in the cause. Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter I, as translated by Arthur Mitchell (1911), p. 14.; italicized in the original.”
“I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind , however simple , that does not change every moment . An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), translated by T. E. Hulme . New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912, p. 44”
“Martin Heidegger at Eighty,”
“I've begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world ... Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theories Amor Mundi . Speaking of her book The Human Condition , as quoted in Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (2004) by Elisabeth Young”
“Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom. As quoted in The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1989) edited by Robert Andrews, p. 114”
“The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good. The Life of the Mind (1978), "Thinking”
“The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good? The good is no longer even being measured. Interview with French writer Roger Errera in New York Review of Books”
“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution. The New Yorker”
“Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians. Men in Dark Times”
“Niemand hat das Recht zu gehorchen.”
“What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core. On Revolution (1963), ch. 2”
“In politics , love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy. All the characteristics you stress in the Negro people: their beauty, their capacity for joy, their warmth, and their humanity, are well”
“Freedom is the highest state of mind.”
“The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophical study.”
“The totality is the true.”
“To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.”
“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”
“Education is the art of making man ethical.”
“What is reasonable is real; what is real is reasonable.”
“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”
“Truth is found in the whole, not in the part.”
“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”
“Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it. Letter to Lou Andreas”
“You have committed one of the greatest stupidities”
“I've seen proof, black on white, that Herr Dr. Förster has not yet severed his connection with the anti”
“So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine. Letter to Carl Fuchs”
“I now myself live, in every detail, striving for wisdom, while I formerly merely worshipped and idolized the wise. Letter to Mathilde Mayer, July 16, 1878, cited in Karl Jaspers , Nietzsche (Baltimore: 1997), p. 46”
“But since it is not known where my center is, it won't be easy to find out where or when I have thus far been”
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
“there are only facts,”
“Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire. Letter to Elisabeth Nietzsche, Bonn, 1865”
“I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor , and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza : that I should have turned to him just now , was inspired by "instinct." Not only is his overtendency like mine”
“Nil terribile nisi ipse timor. Nothing is terrible except fear itself.”
“Lucid intervals and happy pauses. History of King Henry VII , III”
“Aristotle (…) a mere bond”
“Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation. Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works , Vol. 1, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133”
“It is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech (…) that are the true ends of knowledge (…), but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he shall again command them. Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works , Vol. I, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133”
“Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates.”
“Meditationes Sacræ [ Sacred Meditations ] (1597), "De Hæresibus" [Of Heresies]”
“Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. For knowledge itself is power .”
“The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power . Essex's Device”
“Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.”
“The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity .”
“It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths . So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure. (12) Variant translation: One cannot rid himself of his primal fears if he does not understand the nature of the universe, but instead suspects the truth of some mythical story. So without the study of nature, there can be no enjoyment of pure pleasure. [1]”
“No pleasure is in itself evil , but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves. (8) Variant translation: No pleasure is itself a bad thing, but the things that produce some kinds of pleasure, bring along with them unpleasantness that is much greater than the pleasure itself.”
“Οὐκ ἔστιν ἡδέως ζῆν ἄνευ τοῦ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως, οὐδὲ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως ἄνευ τοῦ ἡδέως. ὅτῳ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ ὑπάρχει ἐξ οὗ ζῆν φρονίμως, καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως ὑπάρχει, οὐκ ἔστι τοῦτον ἡδέως ζῆν. It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly , and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly. Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the man is not able to live wisely, though he lives honorably and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life.”
“He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing. The Essential Epicurus : Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican sayings, and fragments (1993) edited by Eugene Michael O'Connor, p. 99”
“Letter to Menoeceus" , as translated in Stoic and Epicurean (1910) by Robert Drew Hicks, p. 169”
“τὸ φρικωδέστατον οὖν τῶν κακῶν ὁ θάνατος οὐθὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς͵ ἐπειδήπερ ὅταν μὲν ἡμεῖς ὦμεν͵ ὁ θάνατος οὐ πάρεστιν͵ ὅταν δὲ ὁ θάνατος παρῇ͵ τόθ΄ ἡμεῖς οὐκ ἐσμέν. Death , therefore, the most awful of evils , is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”
“Luxurious food and drinks , in no way protect you from harm. Wealth beyond what is natural, is no more use than an overflowing container. Real value is not generated by theaters, and baths, perfumes or ointments, but by philosophy . From the esplanade wall at Oenoanda , now in Turkey , as recorded by Diogenes of Oenoanda”
“Δικαιοσύνης καρπὸς μέγιστος ἀταραξία . The greatest reward of righteousness is peace of mind . Attributed to Epicurus by Clement of Alexandria in Stromata”
“ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος, καὶ τἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐεκκαρτέρητον. Don't fear god , Don't worry about death ; What is good is easy to get, and What is terrible is easy to endure. (tr. D. S. Hutchinson, 1994 ) The Tetrapharmakos , or "four”
“Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture”
“He used to reason as follows: 'Everything belongs to the gods; the wise are friends of the gods; friends hold all things in common; ergo , everything belongs to the wise.' Diogenes Laërtius , vi. 37, as reported in Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes as translated by Robin Hard ( Oxford : 2012), p. 13”
“A child has beaten me in plainness of living.”
“Come, see that you obey orders.”
“Nay, I defeat men, you defeat slaves .”
“Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta.”
“Strike, for you will find no wood hard enough to keep me away from you, so long as I think you've something to say.”
“If you are to be kept right , you must possess either good friends or red”
“Aristotle dines when it seems good to King Philip , but Diogenes when he himself pleases. Plutarch , On Exile , 12”
“Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine .”
“Vivir no es un mal, sino mal vivir”
“Un hombre debe vivir tan cerca de sus superiores como cerca del fuego; ni tan cerca que se queme, ni tan lejos que se hiele”
“No comparemos a un mosquito con un elefante”
“El insulto deshonra a quien lo infiere, no a quien lo recibe”
“De los dioses son todas las cosas: los sabios son amigos de los dioses, y las cosas de los amigos son comunes; luego todas las cosas son de los sabios”
“The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues. Discourse on the Method (1637), Part I”
“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. Meditations on First Philosophy (1641)”
“The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once. Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Meditation I”
“When someone says "I think, therefore I am," the term "therefore" does not denote a logical conclusion from a syllogism, but a simple intuition of the mind. Letter to Clerselier (1646)”
“I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake. Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), Meditation I”
“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries. Discourse on the Method (1637), Part I”
“Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it. Discourse on the Method (1637), Part II”
“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well. Discourse on the Method (1637), Part I”
“I doubt, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am. Principles of Philosophy (1644)”
“Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Discourse on the Method (1637), Part IV”
“Good breeding in cattle depends on physical health, but in men on a well”
“Man is a universe in little [ Microcosm ]. Freeman (1948), p. 150”
“Coition is a slight attack of apoplexy. For man gushes forth from man, and is separated by being torn apart with a kind of blow. Freeman (1948), p. 150”
“Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions. Freeman (1948), p. 149”
“We know nothing accurately in reality, but [only] as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon [the body] and impinge upon it. Freeman (1948), p. 142”
“By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void. (trans. Durant 1939), Ch. XVI, §II, p. 353; citing C. Bakewell, Sourcebook in Ancient Philosophy , New York, 1909, "Fragment O" (Diels), p. 60”
“νόμωι (γάρ φησι) γλυκὺ καὶ νόμωι πικρόν, νόμωι θερμόν, νόμωι ψυχρόν, νόμωι χροιή, ἐτεῆι δὲ ἄτομα καὶ κενόν (Tetralogies of Thrasyllus, 9; Sext. Emp. adv. math. VII 135) Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality. (trans. Freeman 1948), p. 92.”
“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.”
“The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist.”
“δοκεῖ δὲ αὐτῶι τάδε· ἀρχὰς εἶναι τῶν ὅλων ἀτόμους καὶ κενόν, τὰ δ'ἀλλα πάντα νενομίσθαι [δοξάζεσθαι]. ( Diogenes Laërtius , Democritus , Vol. IX, 44) Now his principal doctrines were these. That atoms and the vacuum were the beginning of the universe; and that everything else existed only in opinion.”
“Hay que decir la verdad, no hablar mucho”
“Hay hombres que trabajan como si fueran a vivir eternamente”
“El que a nadie ama, me parece que por nadie es amado”
“El mundo es infinito y el hombre una circunstancia”
“El hombre es un microcosmos”
“Now as we call every thing custom , which proceeds from a past repetition, without any new reasoning or conclusion, we may establish it as a certain truth, that all the belief, which follows upon any present impression, is deriv'd solely from that origin. Part 3, Section 8”
“We must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by men's behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures. Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science, which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension. Introduction”
“Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies”
“With regard to politics and the character of princes and great men, I think I am very moderate. My views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representation of persons to Tory prejudices. Nothing can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories. E. C. Mossner, Life of David Hume (Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 311.”
“The conclusion [of the essay 'Of the Protestant Succession'] shows me a Whig, but a very sceptical one. Letter to Henry Home (9 February 1748), quoted in J. Y. T. Greig, The Letters of David Hume: Volume I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), p. 111”
“Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.”
“As to the Approbation or Esteem of those Blockheads who call themselves the Public, & whom a Bookseller, a Lord, a Priest, or a Party can guide, I do most heartily despise it. Letter 138, To Gilbert Elliot of Minto; August 9, 1757”
“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. On Suicide”
“Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence ? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries. Letters”
“The Theory of Moral Sentiments”
“巧言令色、鮮矣仁。 Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.”
“The opening of the Analects and thus the first phrase of Chapter I after which the Chinese title of this book is named 學而.”
“學而時習之、不亦說乎。有朋自遠方來、不亦樂乎。人不知而不慍、不亦君子乎。 Isn't it a pleasure to study and practice what you have learned? Isn't it also great when friends visit from distant places? If one remains not annoyed when he is not understood by people around him, isn't he a sage?”
“Western Civilisation in Relation to Protestant Mission Work”
“The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large. Attributed to Confucius in Out of the Blue: Delight Comes Into Our Lives (1996) by Mark Victor Hansen, Barbara Nichols, and Patty Hansen, p. 93”
“It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them. Reportedly in: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Mistrust, Conspiracy, and Lack of Internet Ethics (1980) Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, Ninety”
“It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great. As quoted in The Importance of Living (1937) by Lin Yutang , p. v”
“Man has three ways of acting wisely. First, on meditation; that is the noblest. Secondly, on imitation ; that is the easiest. Thirdly, on experience ; that is the bitterest. The Analects , as reported in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 279”
“Men do not stumble over mountains , but over molehills Reported in United States Congress House Committee on Agriculture (1973) Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, Ninety”
“He that in his studies wholly applies himself to labour and exercise, and neglects meditation, loses his time, and he that only applies himself to meditation, and neglects labour and exercise, only wanders and loses himself. The Morals of Confucius , 2nd edition (London, 1724), Maxim X, p. 114”
“El cultivo de la memoria es tan necesario como el alimento para el cuerpo”
“El buen ciudadano es aquel que no puede tolerar en su patria un poder que pretenda hacerse superior a las leyes”
“Discutir fortalece la agudeza».”
“De hombres es equivocarse; de locos persistir en el error”
“Bajo el fragor de las armas, las leyes no se pueden escuchar”
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others. As quoted in Wisconsin Congregational Church Life , Vol. 69”
“A grateful mind is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the other virtues. As quoted in Great Thoughts from Latin Authors (1884), by Craufurd Tait Ramage, p. 32”
“Nothing is more to be esteemed than being and appearing grateful. For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues.”
“Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit. Almost no one dances sober, unless he is insane. Pro Murena”
“Indeed rhetoricians are permitted to lie about historical matters so they can speak more subtly.”
“since our leading men think themselves in a seventh heaven, if there are bearded mullets in their fish”
“They are such fools that they seem to expect that, though the Republic is lost, their fish”
“As for me, I cease not to advocate peace. It may be on unjust terms, but even so it is more expedient than the justest of civil wars.”
“On Duties (De Officiis) 1.33”
“We should never take pleasure in causing pain to others, even to those who have wronged us, but rather strive to do good to all.”
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. "Is Theology Poetry?"”
“The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact . "Myth Became Fact"”
“Virgil and the Subject of Secondary Epic”
“Is Criticism Possible?”
“Our English syllabus”
“Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare”
“Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I shd. say, 'sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.' Letter to Arthur Greeves”
“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. Letter to Arthur Greeves”
“Lewis, C. S. (1991). Hooper, Walter. ed (in English).  All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis, 1922”
“I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene : and though I say "at last", I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do”
“In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost; and having a strong resemblance both in form and face to this king, he was taken for him, and acknowledged in this capacity by all the people.”
“The Misery of Man Without God”
“Note on a parchment stitched to the lining of Pascal's coat, found by a servant shortly after his death, as quoted in Burkitt Speculum religionis (1929), p. 150”
“FEU. Dieu d'Abraham, Dieu d'Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et savants. Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix. FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.”
“Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ, by commanding his followers to lay down their own lives. Thoughts on Religion and Philosophy (W. Collins, 1838), Ch. XVI, p. 202”
“On the Art of Persuasion”
“Such statements have also been attributed to Mark Twain , T.S. Eliot , Cicero , and others besides , but this article at Quote Investigator concludes that Pascal's statement is likely the original source of the phrase.”
“Literally: I made this one [letter] longer only because I have not had the leisure to make it shorter.”
“Je n'ai fait celle”
“For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it? Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum”
“Cuando le dices a alguien que la felicidad es algo muy simple, siempre te guardan resentimiento”
“Aun cuando todos los expertos coincidan, pueden muy bien estar equivocados”
“The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads”
“After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. I, 1”
“All the better; they do not force me to do anything that I would not have done of my own accord if I did not dread scandal. But since they want it that way, I enter gladly on the path that is opened to me, with the consolation that my departure will be more innocent than was the exodus of the early Hebrews from Egypt. Statement after his excommunication from Jewish society, attributed by Lucas, in The Oldest Biography of Spinoza (1970) by A. Wolf; also in Spinoza: A Life (1999) by Steven Nadler”
“Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth . For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men. Spinoza, Correspondence, 146, Letter xix”
“Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also. As quoted in The Story of Philosophy (1933) by Will Durant , p. 176”
“How I know that my philosophy is the best among all that have ever been taught in the world, or are being taught, or ever will be taught?”
“I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition , that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge ; this, I take it, is the reason why Christians are distinguished from the rest of the world, not by faith , nor by charity , nor by the other fruits of the Holy Spirit, but solely by their opinions, inasmuch as they defend their cause, like everyone else, by miracles, that is by ignorance , which is the source of all malice; thus they turn a faith, which may be true, into superstition. Letter 21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg , November”
“If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms of harpies, gryphons, hydras, &c., I cannot consider them as anything but dreams, which differ from God as totally as that which is not differs from that which is. Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).”
“This I know, that between finite and infinite there is no comparison; so that the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no less than the difference between God and the least created thing. Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).”
“Principles of Descartes”
“Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a bandage for their wounds, I am not a sacrifice on their altars.”
“And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I.'”
“I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.”
“I am. I think. I will.”
“A moment or an eternity”
“The highest thing in a man is not his god. It's that in him which knows the reverence due a god. You are my highest reverence. Last Page”
“There is only one thing that matters and that we'll remember. The rest doesn't matter. I don't care what life is to be nor what it does to us. But it won't break us. Neither you nor me. That's our only weapon. That's the only banner we can hold against all those others around us. That's all we have to know about the future.”
“There is no such thing as duty. If you know that a thing is right, you want to do it. If you don't want to do it”
“Do you believe in God, Andrei? No. Neither do I. But that's a favorite question of mine. An upside”
“I hope you will understand my hesitation in writing to one whom I admire as the greatest representative of a philosophy to which I want to dedicate my whole life. Letter to H.L. Mencken July 28, 1934.”
“Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit.”
“Make haste slowly.”
“The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works. Tractates on the Gospel of John ; tractate XII on John 3:6”
“God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist. Enchiridion ( c. 420 ), Ch. 27”
“An unjust law is no law at all. On Free Choice Of The Will , Book 1, § 5”
“Alternate translation: With love for mankind and hatred of sins (vices).”
“Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum. Love the sinner and hate the sin . Opera Omnia , Vol II. Col. 962, letter 211”
“The superfluities of the rich are the necessaries of the poor. They who possess superfluities, possess the goods of others. Patrologia Latina , vol. 37, p. 1922”
“I will send you the Paraclete who will teach you about the course of the sun and moon.”
“I am sending you a Paraclete who will teach you about the course of the sun and moon .”
“Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas. Et si tuam naturam mutabilem inveneris, trascende et teipsum . Do not go outside yourself, return to yourself: truth dwells in the interiority of man and, if you find that your nature is changeable, transcend yourself too . As quoted in De vera religione , XXXIX, 72”
“Augustine, Augustine, quid quaeris? Putasne brevi immettere vasculo mare totum? "Augustinus, Augustinus, what are you trying to do? Do you believe to be able to pour the whole sea in a little jar? As quoted in the letter of Augustine to saint Cyril of Jerusalem related to the treaty titled On the Trinity”
“How every line is of such strong, determined, and consistent meaning! And on every page we encounter deep, original, lofty thoughts, while the whole world is suffused with a high and holy seriousness. About Indian sacred scriptures. quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.”
“Christianity taught only what the whole of Asia knew already long before and even better. quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.”
“Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal. Unverified attribution noted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, p. 39; compare Heraclitus : Nothing endures but change.”
“If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man’s property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity. Unverified attribution noted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, p. 227”
“We forfeit three”
“The Christian System,”
“It is the will of God,”
“The New Testament … must be in some way traceable to an Indian source: its ethical system, its ascetic view of morality, its pessimism, and its Avatar, are all thoroughly Indian. It is its morality which places it in a position of such emphatic and essential antagonism to the Old Testament, so that the story of the Fall is the only possible point of connection between the two. quoted in The Circle of Memory_ An Autobiography”
“Obit anus, abit onus. The old woman dies, the burden is lifted. Statement Schopenhauer wrote in Latin into his account book, after the death of a seamstress to whom he had made court”
“It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that distinguishes the philosopher . He must be like Sophocles ' Oedipus , who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further. Letter to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (November 1815) [1]”
“But it is better to assume principles less in number and finite, as Empedocles makes them to be. All philosophers... make principles to be contraries... (for Parmenides makes principles to be hot and cold, and these he demominates fire and earth) as those who introduce as principles the rare and the dense. But Democritus makes the principles to be the solid and the void; of which the former, he says, has the relation of being, and the latter of non”
“The science which has to do with nature clearly concerns itself for the most part with bodies and magnitudes and their properties and movements, but also with the principles of this sort of substance, as many as they may be. On the Heavens Book I, pg. 1”
“Richard McKeon (tr.) (1963), p. 150”
“Also known as Occam's razor or the principle of parsimony / economy”
“We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses”
“Knowledge of the fact differs from knowledge of the reason for the fact. I.13 , 78a.22”
“Of things said without any combination, each signifies either substance or quantity or qualification or a relative or where or when or being”
“Nature does not do anything in vain .”
“My lectures are published and not published; they will be intelligible to those who heard them, and to none beside. Letter to Alexander the Great as quoted by William Whewell , History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), Ch. 2, Sect. 2”
“Philosophy is the science of truth.”
“All uncertainty is fruitful, so long as it is accompanied by the wish to understand.”
“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”
“Death is something we should not fear because, while we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not.”
“The deepest words of the wise man teach us the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows or the sound of the water when it is flowing.”
“Beyond living and dreaming there is something more important: waking up.”
“Surtout point de zèle. ["Above all, no zeal"”
“Wordsworth in the Tropics”
“the Great Kings of Leinster,”
“Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them. Part IV: America , Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey ,”
“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong. Part II: Malaya ,”
“Where are the Movies Moving?”
“I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery. Those Barren Leaves”
“'There are quiet places also in the mind', he said meditatively. 'But we build bandstands and factories on them. Deliberately”
“Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility every time. The Gioconda smile , in Mortal Coils”
“I suppose you imagined I was so insanely in love with you that I could commit any folly. When will you women understand that one isn't insanely in love? All one asks for is a quiet life, which you won't allow one to have. I don't know what the devil ever induced me to marry you. It was all a damned stupid, practical joke. And now you go about saying I'm a murderer. I won't stand it. The Gioconda smile , in Mortal Coils”
“One does not decide the truth of a thought according to whether it is right”
“Toute idée fausse finit dans le sang, mais il s'agit toujours du sang des autres. C'est ce qui explique que certains de nos philosophes se sentent à l'aise pour dire n'importe quoi. Mistaken ideas always end in bloodshed, but in every case it is someone else's blood. That is why some of our thinkers feel free to say just about anything. Actuelles I, 1950”
“Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world. "Helen's Exile"”
“We turn our backs on nature ; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink. "Helen's Exile"”
“We have exiled beauty ; the Greeks took up arms for her. "Helen's Exile"”
“Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don't help us, who else in the world can help us do this? Said at the Dominican Monastery of Latour”
“It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming”
“A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. And in a good novel, the whole of the philosophy has passed into the images. But if once the philosophy overflows the characters and action, and therefore looks like a label stuck on the work, the plot loses its authenticity and the novel its life. Nevertheless, a work that is to last cannot dispense with profound ideas. And this secret fusion between experiences and ideas, between life and reflection on the meaning of life, is what makes the great novelist. Review of Nausea by Jean”
“Nous nous trompons toujours deux fois sur ceux que nous aimons: d'abord à leur avantage, puis à leur désavantage. We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love”
“He is going to pay his debt to society ,”