TOPICS
SPEAKERS
HOME
BROWSE TOPICS
BROWSE SPEAKERS

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
...
25
26
27
28
29
 		...
I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.
- Orhan Pamuk
My Name Is Red
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
- Bertrand Russell
The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.
- Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn't quite as spectacular.
- Lisa Lutz
The Spellmans Strike Again
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Perhaps not one religion contains all of the truth of the world. Perhaps every religion contains fragments of the truth, and it is our responsibility to identify those fragments and piece them together.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.
- Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I would prefer a sword to fight duel, but a pen to plan a war.
- Robert Thier
Storm and Silence
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The things you think about determine the quality of your mind.
- Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
- John Stuart Mill
On Liberty
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.
- Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddha Mind, Buddha Body: Walking Toward Enlightenment
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!
- Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Fathers and Sons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky.

But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!
- Eliezer Yudkowsky
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
- James Madison
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Philosophy can make people sick.
- Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Thoughts become things. If you see it in your mind, you will hold it in your hand.
- Bob Proctor
You Were Born Rich
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo's Notebooks
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
- Jeremy Bentham
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.
- Orhan Pamuk
My Name Is Red
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
- Bertrand Russell
The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.
- Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn't quite as spectacular.
- Lisa Lutz
The Spellmans Strike Again
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Perhaps not one religion contains all of the truth of the world. Perhaps every religion contains fragments of the truth, and it is our responsibility to identify those fragments and piece them together.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.
- Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I would prefer a sword to fight duel, but a pen to plan a war.
- Robert Thier
Storm and Silence
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The things you think about determine the quality of your mind.
- Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
- John Stuart Mill
On Liberty
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.
- Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddha Mind, Buddha Body: Walking Toward Enlightenment
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!
- Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Fathers and Sons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky.

But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!
- Eliezer Yudkowsky
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
- James Madison
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Philosophy can make people sick.
- Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Thoughts become things. If you see it in your mind, you will hold it in your hand.
- Bob Proctor
You Were Born Rich
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo's Notebooks
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
- Jeremy Bentham
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.
- Orhan Pamuk
My Name Is Red
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
- Bertrand Russell
The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.
- Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn't quite as spectacular.
- Lisa Lutz
The Spellmans Strike Again
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Perhaps not one religion contains all of the truth of the world. Perhaps every religion contains fragments of the truth, and it is our responsibility to identify those fragments and piece them together.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I never found beauty in longing for the impossible and never found the possible to be beyond my reach.
- Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I would prefer a sword to fight duel, but a pen to plan a war.
- Robert Thier
Storm and Silence
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The things you think about determine the quality of your mind.
- Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
- John Stuart Mill
On Liberty
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When you choose one way out of many, all the ways you don't take are snuffed out like candles, as if they'd never existed.
- Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddha Mind, Buddha Body: Walking Toward Enlightenment
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!
- Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
Fathers and Sons
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky.

But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!
- Eliezer Yudkowsky
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Philosophy is common sense with big words.
- James Madison
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Philosophy can make people sick.
- Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Thoughts become things. If you see it in your mind, you will hold it in your hand.
- Bob Proctor
You Were Born Rich
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
All sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of Experience, the mother of all Knowledge.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo's Notebooks
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
- Jeremy Bentham
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
...
25
26
27
28
29
 		...