Philosophical Quotes

All pain is either severe or slight, if slight, it is easily endured; if severe, it will without doubt be brief.

The science of systematics has long been affected by profound philosophical preconceptions, which have been all the more influential for being usually covert, even subconscious.

Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.

Never injure a friend, even in jest.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

One may summon his philosophy when they are beaten in battle, not till then.

Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

In unphilosophical minds any rare or unexpected thing excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar excites wonder also.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

Logic must look after itself. In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic.

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.

Philosophical systems are wholly true for their founders only.

A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about.

God is the ultimate philosophical questioner, the one who asks the logically paradoxical ultimate philosophical question about the nature of his own existence.

We should listen to both philosophers and scientists, because the philosophical contribution is different from the scientific contribution, and both of them are worthwhile.

Everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident

It is necessary to correct the error that vegetarianism has made us weak in mind, or passive or inert in action. I do not regard flesh-food as necessary at any stage

The world is a philosophical prison and Man is the philosophical prisoner.

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!

Without a whole lot of pressure, a diamond is just a piece of coal.

I have never since entirely freed myself of the impression that this life is a segment of existence which is enacted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe especially set up for it.

Who knoweth if to die be but to live, and that called life by mortals be but death?

Doctrines are meant to serve man, not the other way around.

The happy and the suffering probably understand life equally well, but the sufferers may see a little more clearly how little it is that they understand.

A fault is fostered by concealment.

Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion?

What can be shown, cannot be said.

In philosophical inquiry, the human spirit, imitating the movement of the stars, must follow a curve which brings it back to its point of departure. To conclude is to close a circle.

That's an interesting philosophical question. When your boner goes away, is that one gone... forever?

With my full philosophical rucksack I can only climb slowly up the mountain of mathematics.

We can't know or say what other people do. You have to think what you want to do to get the situation where you want it to be.

All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.

Note that the eating of flesh is not only physically against nature, but it also makes us spiritually coarse and gross by reason of satiety and surfeit.

Real philosophy seeks rather to solve than to deny.

No religion except ours has taught that man is born in sin; none of the philosophical sects has admitted it; none therefore has spoken the truth

The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone

The book is what we have come to expect from Marion: challenging, subtle and nuanced analyses, dassling formulations, . . a provocative and original philosophical genius.

When a man is proud because he can understand and explain the writings of Chrysippus, say to yourself, 'if Chrysippus had not written obscurely, this man would have had nothing to be proud of.'

From the outset, however, this whole controversy has been plagued by tacit assumptions, very often of a philosophical rather than a physical character.

Your life is a series of moments in "now." The better you make your "now" the better your life.

The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.

Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.

Jacques Tati is the great philosophical tinkerer of comedy, taking meticulous care to arrange his films so that they unfold in a series of revelations and effortless delights.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man's resources?

For this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.

Your descendants shall gather your fruits.

Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.

Even the most heartening of philosophical vistas is no match for, say, a toothache, if it happens to be your own.