Quotes | Philosophy
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.
An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.
He who hath many friends hath none.
A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.
We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.
Bad men are full of repentance.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Men acquire particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand fold.
He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.
I have gained this by philosophy that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.
Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
The difference between a learned man and an ignorant one is the same as that between a living man and a corpse.
The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.
Something is infinite if, taking it quantity by quantity, we can always take something outside.
Each man judges well the things he knows.
Philosophy is the product of wonder.
Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end when philosophic thought has done its best the wonder remains.
Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.
Words build bridges into unexplored regions.
Great liars are also great magicians.
Hate is more lasting than dislike.
Always be listening and learning.
To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake it is necessary to stand out in the cold.
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
It is bad for a young man to sin; but it is worse for an old man to sin.
If an ignorant person is attracted by the things of the world, that is bad. But if a learned person is thus attracted, it is worse.
Pride in the case of a rich man is bad, but pride in the case of a poor man is worse.
Death is the easiest of all things after it, and the hardest of all things before it.
When knowledge is limited – it leads to folly… When knowledge exceeds a certain limit, it leads to exploitation.
He who fears to weep should learn to be kind to those who weep.
Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile.
Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.
Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.
There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.
