Philosophical quotes
2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside philosophical — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"This prophecy of a coming enlightenment is echoed in virtually every faith and philosophical tradition on Earth. Hindus call it the Krita Age, astrologers call it the Age of Aquarius, the Jews describe the coming of the Messiah, theosophists call it the New Age, cosmologists call it Harmonic Convergence and predict the actual date of December 21, 2012."
"There is nothing good or evil save in the will."
"There are many of these apparent philosophical paradoxes or contradictions which don't concern me anymore."
"Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism."
"Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principals."
"THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious."
"To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian."
"You will all know that in the Middle Ages there were supposed to be various classes of angels. these hierarchized celsitudes are but the last traces in a less philosophical age of the ideas which Plato taught his disciples existed in the spiritual world."
"More and more people are becoming unable to accept traditional [religious] beliefs. If they think that, apart from these beliefs, there is no reason for kindly behaviour, the results may be needlessly unfortunate. That is why it is important to show that no supernatural reasons are needed to make [people] kind and to prove that only through kindness can the human race achieve happiness."
"Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical."
"King in Crimson is actually an alchemical term. King Crimson is a metaphor for Devil or Satan, but at the same time it's also a metaphor for one of the statures in the purification of man and the purification of mankind soul towards union with God and with Infinite, which is the philosophical aim of alchemists."
"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
"Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system."
"For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize... They were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end."
"for we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use"
"Happiness is the highest good"
"Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures."
"There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over."
"Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity."
"Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is."
