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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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Existence is beyond the power of words
To define:
Terms may be used
But are none of them absolute.
In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words,
Words came out of the womb of matter;
And whether a man dispassionately
Sees to the core of life
Or passionately
Sees the surface,
The core and the surface
Are essentially the same,
Words making them seem different
Only to express appearance.
If name be needed, wonder names them both:
From wonder into wonder
Existence opens.
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NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.
- Ambrose Bierce
The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
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In one way, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.
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Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
- Walter Benjamin
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He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.
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If you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneron… my answer is “How should I know?”… I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteries… I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph.
- Martin Gardner
The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener
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Whether we like it or not, modern ways are going to alter and in part destroy traditional customs and values.
- Werner Heisenberg
Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At what moment?" she asked him. "At what moment do we cease to be humans and become objects?"

Blaise continued to make his way in silence, carrying the lamp at arm's length to spread its light as far as possible. When he finally replied, it was in a different voice from usual, deeper, calmer, and without the slightest stutter: "Some humans are objects while they're alive, Mademoiselle Eulalia.
- Christelle Dabos
La Mémoire de Babel
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Right,' he said. 'So it stands to reason there's something about the line that fortifies or protects a corpse. The soul. The ... animus. The quiddity of it.'
'Gansey, seriously,' Adam interrupted, to Blue's relief. 'Nobody knows what quiddity is.'
'The whatness, Adam. Whatever it is that makes a person who they are.
- Maggie Stiefvater
The Raven Boys
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Wisdom is being able to see the world for what it is, rather than what you want it to be.
- Patrick F. Rooney
The Angel of Innisfree
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The inner revolution will not be televised or sold on the Internet. It must take place within one's own mind and heart.
- Noah Levine
Dharma Punx: A Memoir
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Sometimes... Reason and Love are met with a violent ignorance that even what's right gets lost. Our heart bleeds, but when does the blood shed end and the healing begin?
- Solange nicole
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We've heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own ... Then, it turns out that this doing one's own work-provided that it comes to be in a certain way-is justice.
- Plato
The Republic
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All statistics have outliers.
- Nenia Campbell
Terrorscape
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You cannot be remade unless you are first broken.
- Steven Erikson
Deadhouse Gates
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.
- Susanna Kaysen
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Omnia vincit amor" - "Love conquers all
- Virgil
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I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.
- Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of the dying to the young, so print and commerce and a thousand ways of communication may bind the civilizations together, and preserve for future cultures all that is of value for them in our own. Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children.
- Will Durant
Our Oriental Heritage
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The more invested I am in my own ideas about reality, the more those experiences will feel like victimizations rather than the ups and downs of relating. Actually, I believe that the less I conceptualize things that way, the more likely it is that people will want to stay by me, because they will not feel burdened, consciously or unconsciously, by my projections, judgments, entitlements, or unrealistic expectations.
- David Richo
Daring to Trust: Opening Ourselves to Real Love and Intimacy
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
On a grander scale, when a society segregates itself, the consequences affect the economy, the emotions, and the ecology. That's one reason why it's easy for pro-lifers to eat factory-raised animals that disrespect everything sacred about creation. And that is why it's easy for rabid environmentalists to hate chainsaws even though they snuggle into a mattress supported by a black walnut bedstead.
- Joel Salatin
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Time cannot put anything in your hands until you let go off the time.
- Vishwanath S J
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Knowledge can be acquired by a suitable and complete study, no matter what the starting point is. Only one must know how to 'learn.' What is nearest to us is man; and you are the nearest of all men to yourself. Begin with the study of yourself; remember the saying 'Know thyself.
- G.I. Gurdjieff
Views from the Real World
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Existence is beyond the power of words
To define:
Terms may be used
But are none of them absolute.
In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words,
Words came out of the womb of matter;
And whether a man dispassionately
Sees to the core of life
Or passionately
Sees the surface,
The core and the surface
Are essentially the same,
Words making them seem different
Only to express appearance.
If name be needed, wonder names them both:
From wonder into wonder
Existence opens.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.
- Ambrose Bierce
The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In one way, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
- Walter Benjamin
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneron… my answer is “How should I know?”… I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteries… I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph.
- Martin Gardner
The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whether we like it or not, modern ways are going to alter and in part destroy traditional customs and values.
- Werner Heisenberg
Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At what moment?" she asked him. "At what moment do we cease to be humans and become objects?"

Blaise continued to make his way in silence, carrying the lamp at arm's length to spread its light as far as possible. When he finally replied, it was in a different voice from usual, deeper, calmer, and without the slightest stutter: "Some humans are objects while they're alive, Mademoiselle Eulalia.
- Christelle Dabos
La Mémoire de Babel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Right,' he said. 'So it stands to reason there's something about the line that fortifies or protects a corpse. The soul. The ... animus. The quiddity of it.'
'Gansey, seriously,' Adam interrupted, to Blue's relief. 'Nobody knows what quiddity is.'
'The whatness, Adam. Whatever it is that makes a person who they are.
- Maggie Stiefvater
The Raven Boys
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Wisdom is being able to see the world for what it is, rather than what you want it to be.
- Patrick F. Rooney
The Angel of Innisfree
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The inner revolution will not be televised or sold on the Internet. It must take place within one's own mind and heart.
- Noah Levine
Dharma Punx: A Memoir
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Sometimes... Reason and Love are met with a violent ignorance that even what's right gets lost. Our heart bleeds, but when does the blood shed end and the healing begin?
- Solange nicole
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We've heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own ... Then, it turns out that this doing one's own work-provided that it comes to be in a certain way-is justice.
- Plato
The Republic
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All statistics have outliers.
- Nenia Campbell
Terrorscape
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You cannot be remade unless you are first broken.
- Steven Erikson
Deadhouse Gates
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.
- Susanna Kaysen
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Omnia vincit amor" - "Love conquers all
- Virgil
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.
- Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of the dying to the young, so print and commerce and a thousand ways of communication may bind the civilizations together, and preserve for future cultures all that is of value for them in our own. Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children.
- Will Durant
Our Oriental Heritage
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The more invested I am in my own ideas about reality, the more those experiences will feel like victimizations rather than the ups and downs of relating. Actually, I believe that the less I conceptualize things that way, the more likely it is that people will want to stay by me, because they will not feel burdened, consciously or unconsciously, by my projections, judgments, entitlements, or unrealistic expectations.
- David Richo
Daring to Trust: Opening Ourselves to Real Love and Intimacy
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
On a grander scale, when a society segregates itself, the consequences affect the economy, the emotions, and the ecology. That's one reason why it's easy for pro-lifers to eat factory-raised animals that disrespect everything sacred about creation. And that is why it's easy for rabid environmentalists to hate chainsaws even though they snuggle into a mattress supported by a black walnut bedstead.
- Joel Salatin
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Time cannot put anything in your hands until you let go off the time.
- Vishwanath S J
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Knowledge can be acquired by a suitable and complete study, no matter what the starting point is. Only one must know how to 'learn.' What is nearest to us is man; and you are the nearest of all men to yourself. Begin with the study of yourself; remember the saying 'Know thyself.
- G.I. Gurdjieff
Views from the Real World
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Existence is beyond the power of words
To define:
Terms may be used
But are none of them absolute.
In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words,
Words came out of the womb of matter;
And whether a man dispassionately
Sees to the core of life
Or passionately
Sees the surface,
The core and the surface
Are essentially the same,
Words making them seem different
Only to express appearance.
If name be needed, wonder names them both:
From wonder into wonder
Existence opens.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
NIHILIST, n. A Russian who denies the existence of anything but Tolstoi. The leader of the school is Tolstoi.
- Ambrose Bierce
The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In one way, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
- Walter Benjamin
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneron… my answer is “How should I know?”… I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteries… I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph.
- Martin Gardner
The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whether we like it or not, modern ways are going to alter and in part destroy traditional customs and values.
- Werner Heisenberg
Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At what moment?" she asked him. "At what moment do we cease to be humans and become objects?"

Blaise continued to make his way in silence, carrying the lamp at arm's length to spread its light as far as possible. When he finally replied, it was in a different voice from usual, deeper, calmer, and without the slightest stutter: "Some humans are objects while they're alive, Mademoiselle Eulalia.
- Christelle Dabos
La Mémoire de Babel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Right,' he said. 'So it stands to reason there's something about the line that fortifies or protects a corpse. The soul. The ... animus. The quiddity of it.'
'Gansey, seriously,' Adam interrupted, to Blue's relief. 'Nobody knows what quiddity is.'
'The whatness, Adam. Whatever it is that makes a person who they are.
- Maggie Stiefvater
The Raven Boys
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Wisdom is being able to see the world for what it is, rather than what you want it to be.
- Patrick F. Rooney
The Angel of Innisfree
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The inner revolution will not be televised or sold on the Internet. It must take place within one's own mind and heart.
- Noah Levine
Dharma Punx: A Memoir
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Sometimes... Reason and Love are met with a violent ignorance that even what's right gets lost. Our heart bleeds, but when does the blood shed end and the healing begin?
- Solange nicole
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We've heard many people say and have often said ourselves that justice is doing one's own work and not meddling with what isn't one's own ... Then, it turns out that this doing one's own work-provided that it comes to be in a certain way-is justice.
- Plato
The Republic
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All statistics have outliers.
- Nenia Campbell
Terrorscape
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You cannot be remade unless you are first broken.
- Steven Erikson
Deadhouse Gates
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.
- Susanna Kaysen
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Omnia vincit amor" - "Love conquers all
- Virgil
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I have often noticed that these things, which obsess me, neither bother nor impress other people even slightly. I am horribly apt to approach some innocent at a gathering, and like the ancient mariner, fix him with a wild, glitt’ring eye and say, “Do you know that in the head of the caterpillar of the ordinary goat moth there are two hundred twenty-eight separate muscles?” The poor wretch flees. I am not making chatter; I mean to change his life.
- Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of the dying to the young, so print and commerce and a thousand ways of communication may bind the civilizations together, and preserve for future cultures all that is of value for them in our own. Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children.
- Will Durant
Our Oriental Heritage
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The more invested I am in my own ideas about reality, the more those experiences will feel like victimizations rather than the ups and downs of relating. Actually, I believe that the less I conceptualize things that way, the more likely it is that people will want to stay by me, because they will not feel burdened, consciously or unconsciously, by my projections, judgments, entitlements, or unrealistic expectations.
- David Richo
Daring to Trust: Opening Ourselves to Real Love and Intimacy
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
On a grander scale, when a society segregates itself, the consequences affect the economy, the emotions, and the ecology. That's one reason why it's easy for pro-lifers to eat factory-raised animals that disrespect everything sacred about creation. And that is why it's easy for rabid environmentalists to hate chainsaws even though they snuggle into a mattress supported by a black walnut bedstead.
- Joel Salatin
Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Time cannot put anything in your hands until you let go off the time.
- Vishwanath S J
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Knowledge can be acquired by a suitable and complete study, no matter what the starting point is. Only one must know how to 'learn.' What is nearest to us is man; and you are the nearest of all men to yourself. Begin with the study of yourself; remember the saying 'Know thyself.
- G.I. Gurdjieff
Views from the Real World
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
...
113
114
115
116
117
 		...