Philosophy quotes
5.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside philosophy — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"We want today that bright sun of intellectuality joined with the heart of Buddha, the wonderful infinite heart of love and mercy. This union will give us the highest philosophy."
"My point of view and philosophy continues to change and grow. As the years go by you go through this evolution."
"Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending."
"Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched."
"The film festival is in a town in Arkansas, a quintessentially American town with a little town square. It's to champion women and diversity in all media, so TV, movies, eventually, digital, whatever you get into. That's the goal. We're using the same philosophy as my institute, which is to make it research-based and really try to work directly with filmmakers and content creators and move the needle. It's the only film festival in the world where the prizes are guaranteed distribution."
"But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain."
"Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom."
"The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophic study."
"Whatever happens, every individual is a child of his time; so philosophy too is its own time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as absurd to fancy that a philosophy can transcend its contemporary world as it is to fancy that an individual can overleap his own age, jump over Rhodes."
"Science and knowledge, especially that of philosophy, came from the Arabs into the West."
"And what can we do to silence these Christian athletes who thank Jesus whenever they win, never mention his name when they lose? Not a word. You never hear them say "Jesus made me drop the ball." "The good lord tripped me up behind the line of scrimmage." According to these guys Jesus is undefeated, meanwhile these assholes are in last place. Must be another one of those "miracles.""
"There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language."
"Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all."
"Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil."
"Every age must look for its sanction to its poetry and philosophy, for in these the human mind, as it looks backward or forward, attains to an eternal state."
"The highest condition of art is artlessness."
"Discontent is the seed of ethics."
"Plato was a bore."
"Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven."
"The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people."
