Philosophical quotes
2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside philosophical — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle."
"When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed anddrawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,--those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers."
"It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea."
"Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit."
"Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity it is part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical speculation."
"Philosophical systems are wholly true for their founders only."
"My philosophy is inverted Platonism: the further a thing is from true being, the purer, the lovelier, the better it is. Living inillusion as a goal!"
"It may be called the Master Passion, the hunger for self-approval."
"I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about."
"How many famous and high-spirited heroes have lived a day too long?"
"We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced."
"One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day."
"Everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident"
"Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it."
"Existence precedes and rules essence."
"If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature."
"One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then."
"Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature"
"There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter if not a paragraph or a name in the history of philosophy."
"People habituate themselves to let things pass through their minds, as one may speak, rather than to think of them. Thus by use they become satisfied merely with seeing what is said, without going any further. Review and attention, and even forming a judgment, becomes fatigue; and to lay anything before them that requires it, is putting them quite out of their way."
