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PHILOSOPHICAL QUOTES

Philosophical quotes offer condensed insights into humanity’s deepest questions. They invite reflection on how we think, live, and relate to the world around us. The following collection serves as a doorway to contemplation, curiosity, and quiet intellectual challenge.   ◀ Back
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A man leaves his great house because he's bored
With life at home, and suddenly returns,
Finding himself no happier abroad.
He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,
You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,
And yawns before he's put his foot inside,
Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,
Or even rushes back to town again.
So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because
It clings to him the more closely against his will)
And hates himself because he is sick in mind
And does not know the cause of his disease.
- Lucretius
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?
- Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.
- Peter Kreeft
Jesus-Shock
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.
Topic: Philosophical
Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself.
- Dejan Stojanovic
The Sun Watches the Sun
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I have forgotten my umbrella.
Topic: Philosophical
Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country?
Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this.
Socrates: How so, Plato?
Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is a
sculptor.
Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they have
no need to be reminded.
Plato: That is correct.
Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders.
- E.A. Bucchianeri
Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity
- Seneca,
Dialogues and Letters
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.
- Epictetus
The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
Topic: Philosophical
Where the world comes in my way—and it comes in my way everywhere—I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but—my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.
- Max Stirner
The Ego and Its Own
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Don't hate the media; become the media.
- Jello Biafra
Become the Media
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. … You are captives—and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?—your captivity and the captivity of the world.
- Daniel Quinn
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.
- Leo Tolstoy
Семейное счастие
Topic: Philosophical
There is your truth and there is my truth. As for the universal truth, it does not exist.
- Amish Tripathi
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
I think it was the institution...I was trying to master it.
- E. Lockhart
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship.
- Richard Adams
Watership Down
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
All actual life is encounter.
- Martin Buber
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
If just one of [those people] experiences life as a crazy adventure--and I mean that he, or she, experiences this every single day... Then he or she is a joker in a pack of cards.
- Jostein Gaarder
The Solitaire Mystery
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
The Age of Reason
Topic: Philosophical
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.
- Immanuel Kant
The Metaphysics of Morals
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
So you think that money is the root of all evil? [...] Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
- Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
Topic: Philosophical
When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol.
- Joel Salatin
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
A man leaves his great house because he's bored
With life at home, and suddenly returns,
Finding himself no happier abroad.
He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,
You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,
And yawns before he's put his foot inside,
Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,
Or even rushes back to town again.
So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because
It clings to him the more closely against his will)
And hates himself because he is sick in mind
And does not know the cause of his disease.
- Lucretius
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?
- Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.
- Peter Kreeft
Jesus-Shock
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.
Topic: Philosophical
Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself.
- Dejan Stojanovic
The Sun Watches the Sun
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I have forgotten my umbrella.
Topic: Philosophical
Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country?
Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this.
Socrates: How so, Plato?
Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is a
sculptor.
Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they have
no need to be reminded.
Plato: That is correct.
Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders.
- E.A. Bucchianeri
Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity
- Seneca,
Dialogues and Letters
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.
- Epictetus
The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
Topic: Philosophical
Where the world comes in my way—and it comes in my way everywhere—I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but—my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.
- Max Stirner
The Ego and Its Own
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Don't hate the media; become the media.
- Jello Biafra
Become the Media
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. … You are captives—and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?—your captivity and the captivity of the world.
- Daniel Quinn
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.
- Leo Tolstoy
Семейное счастие
Topic: Philosophical
There is your truth and there is my truth. As for the universal truth, it does not exist.
- Amish Tripathi
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
I think it was the institution...I was trying to master it.
- E. Lockhart
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship.
- Richard Adams
Watership Down
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
All actual life is encounter.
- Martin Buber
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
If just one of [those people] experiences life as a crazy adventure--and I mean that he, or she, experiences this every single day... Then he or she is a joker in a pack of cards.
- Jostein Gaarder
The Solitaire Mystery
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
The Age of Reason
Topic: Philosophical
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.
- Immanuel Kant
The Metaphysics of Morals
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
So you think that money is the root of all evil? [...] Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
- Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
Topic: Philosophical
When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol.
- Joel Salatin
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
A man leaves his great house because he's bored
With life at home, and suddenly returns,
Finding himself no happier abroad.
He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,
You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,
And yawns before he's put his foot inside,
Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,
Or even rushes back to town again.
So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because
It clings to him the more closely against his will)
And hates himself because he is sick in mind
And does not know the cause of his disease.
- Lucretius
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?
- Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
This is the secret of life: the self lives only by dying, finds its identity (and its happiness) only by self-forgetfulness, self-giving, self-sacrifice, and agape love.
- Peter Kreeft
Jesus-Shock
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.
Topic: Philosophical
Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself.
- Dejan Stojanovic
The Sun Watches the Sun
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I have forgotten my umbrella.
Topic: Philosophical
Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country?
Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this.
Socrates: How so, Plato?
Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is a
sculptor.
Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they have
no need to be reminded.
Plato: That is correct.
Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders.
- E.A. Bucchianeri
Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity
- Seneca,
Dialogues and Letters
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.
- Epictetus
The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
Topic: Philosophical
Where the world comes in my way—and it comes in my way everywhere—I consume it to quiet the hunger of my egoism. For me you are nothing but—my food, even as I too am fed upon and turned to use by you. We have only one relation to each other, that of usableness, of utility, of use. We owe each other nothing, for what I seem to owe you I owe at most to myself. If I show you a cheery air in order to cheer you likewise, then your cheeriness is of consequence to me, and my air serves my wish; to a thousand others, whom I do not aim to cheer, I do not show it.
- Max Stirner
The Ego and Its Own
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Don't hate the media; become the media.
- Jello Biafra
Become the Media
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. … You are captives—and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?—your captivity and the captivity of the world.
- Daniel Quinn
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt it in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.
- Leo Tolstoy
Семейное счастие
Topic: Philosophical
There is your truth and there is my truth. As for the universal truth, it does not exist.
- Amish Tripathi
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
I think it was the institution...I was trying to master it.
- E. Lockhart
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship.
- Richard Adams
Watership Down
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
All actual life is encounter.
- Martin Buber
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
If just one of [those people] experiences life as a crazy adventure--and I mean that he, or she, experiences this every single day... Then he or she is a joker in a pack of cards.
- Jostein Gaarder
The Solitaire Mystery
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
The Age of Reason
Topic: Philosophical
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.
- Immanuel Kant
The Metaphysics of Morals
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
XXX
NOT YET RATING ▼
So you think that money is the root of all evil? [...] Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
- Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
Topic: Philosophical
When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol.
- Joel Salatin
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Philosophical
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111
112
113
114
115
 		...