Quotes by Philosophers - Page 318

It is, however, a most astonishing but incontestable fact, that the history of the evolution of man as yet constitutes no part of general education. Indeed, our so-called 'educated classes' are to this day in total ignorance of the most important circumstances and the most remarkable phenomena which Anthropogeny has brought to light.
Ernst Haeckel
Shed not recklessly the blood of another with thy sword,Lest the Sword on High falls upon thy neck.
Guru Gobind Singh
The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available.
Theodor W. Adorno
Forsake not the friendship of those who have been your staff in adversity, Forget not be benevolence of the blameless.
Thiruvalluvar
Honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted.
Ayn Rand
People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.
Epicurus
Some books leave us free and some books make us free.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A flower has no choice in where it is planted, but does have a choice in the direction it grows.
Matshona Dhliwayo
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
Heraclitus
When spirits fall, their darkness is revealed, for they are stripped of the garment of your light. By the misery and restlessness which they then suffer you make clear to us how noble a being is your rational creation, for nothing less than yourself suffices to give it rest and happiness. This means that it cannot find them in itself. For you, O God, will shine on the darkness about us. From you proceeds our garment of light, and our dusk shall be noonday.
Augustine of Hippo
Here then we are first to consider a book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, and in all probability long after the facts which it relates, corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling those fabulous accounts, which every nation gives of its origin.
David Hume
In following the Way, the noble-minded treasure three things: a manner free of violence and arrogance, a countenance full of sincerity and trust, a voice free of vulgarity and impropriety.
Confucius
We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more important than the democracy it declares.
G.K. Chesterton
Even if it's a little thing do something for those who have need of help something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it.
Albert Schweitzer
Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing – say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne of the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico; in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico; for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico; to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles… If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.
G.K. Chesterton
I have a sickness doctors can't cure,Inexorably pulling me to the well of my destruction,Consented to be a sacrifice, killed for her love,Eager, like the drunk gulping wine mixed with poison,Shameless were those my nights,Yet my soul loved them beyond all passion.
Ibn Hazm Al-Andalusi
Tears are the silent language of grief.
Voltaire
What you conquer within you conquer without.
Matshona Dhliwayo
It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we should begin to be concerned, for this may be the surest sign that we are being gently lied to or shielded from the other’s imagination, whether out of kindness or from a touching fear of losing our love. It may mean that we have, despite ourselves, shut our ears to information that fails to conform to our hopes — hopes which will thereby be endangered all the more. My view of human nature is that all of us are just holding it together in various ways — and that’s okay, and we just need to go easy with one another, knowing that we’re all these incredibly fragile beings.
Alain de Botton
Atheists are the most honest of the human race. These people are unable to live a double life; they are unable to lie to themselves. Of course it's an evolutionary handicap, and if that handicap was widespread, our species would run the risk of extinction
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Chance is your godThough you're falling free you will land hard
Criss Jami
Socrates insisted that there's a strong connection between your philosophy (how you interpret the world, what you think is important in life) and your mental and physical health. Different beliefs lead to different emotional states...
Jules Evans
The inner self is as distinct from the outer self as heaven is from earth.
Emanuel Swedenborg
Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
We've got this weird dysgenic situation where we're basically just paying idiots to breed and taxing intelligent people to stay away from each other with anything remotely resembling fertility.
Stefan Molyneux
It is a self-deception of philosophers and moralists to imagine that they escape decadence by opposing it. That is beyond their will; and, however little they acknowledge it, one later discovers that they were among the most powerful promoters of decadence.
Friedrich Nietzsche
For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.
Alan W. Watts
Personal growth is not like the development of a skill. It does not take place in observable increments that can be measured and charted. Indeed, as we have seen, when we're growing in sensitivity, generosity, and compassion, we're not aware of it, because we're not focusing on ourselves. The recovery of emotional freedom simply does not have the quality, for most of us, of a controllable sequence of transformations. It's more a career of discovering futher and further weaknesses and shedding them in turn.
C. Terry Warner
A lion will never be afraid of sheep, no matter how many outnumber it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
As you become aware of life, you will begin to see the root cause to all your actions and reactions. Then you will realize that you are not angry with the child because he made a mistake, but because you get pleasure out of being angry. The mistake was only a excuse.
Osho
Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Criss Jami
An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.
Albert Camus
Your greatest highs come from overcoming your greatest lows.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Forgiveness is the best way to disempower the enemy.
Gift Gugu Mona
God, listen to the absurdity within us and raise us from the illusion!
Sorin Cerin
Looking up at the stars only proves you admire them, but shining your light proves you are like them.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The practical implementation of friendship, affection and love consists of incorporating the welfare (the rational welfare) of the person involved into one’s own hierarchy of values, then acting accordingly.
Ayn Rand
The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.
Henry S. Haskins
All men have happiness as their object: there are no exceptions. However different the means they employ they aim at the same end.
Blaise Pascal
The man of courage thinks not of himself. Help the oppressed and put thy trust in God.
Friedrich Schiller
Oh, how crafty of religion, I cried out indignantly, to transplant rewards and punishments into a future life in order to comfort cowards and the enslaved and aggrieved, enabling them to bow their necks patiently before their masters, and to endure this earthly life without groaning (the only life of which we can be sure)!
Nikos Kazantzakis
Thorns do not keep a rose from blooming, neither should obstacles keep you from success.
Matshona Dhliwayo
One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Master said, "I have not seen a person who loved virtue, or onewho hated what was not virtuous. He who loved virtue, would esteemnothing above it. He who hated what is not virtuous, would practicevirtue in such a way that he would not allow anything that is notvirtuous to approach his person."Is any one able for one day to apply his strength to virtue? I havenot seen the case in which his strength would be insufficient."Should there possibly be any such case, I have not seen it.
Confucius
Marketing is so powerful that it can make even an extremely untalented musician a one-hundred-hits wonder.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Conscience is the true power. It resides within us. The intention to be absolutely truthful and the willingness to put the benefit of all before personal benefit hold the power to change the world. !is intention and willingness is of course ethical choice, but it is also the most natural, reasonable, and intelligent choice when we realize what we really are. If people begin to use the full power of conscience in all the choices they make in their everyday life, from presidential elections to purchasing things in the grocery store, the world will change.
Ilchi Lee
Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.
Plato
Knowlege of God without knowledge of man's wretchedness leads to pride. Knowledge of man's wretchedness without knowledge of God leads to despair. Knowledge of Jesus Christ is the middle course, because by it we discover both God and our wretched state.
Blaise Pascal
If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help other out of this chaos - not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Faith is believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.
Voltaire
I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.
Gaston Bachelard
An opportunity fordoing an injury happens a hundred times a day, hut for doing good not once a year," says Zoroaster.
Voltaire
Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.... Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall off relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Loneliness makes us more capable of true intimacy if ever better opportunities do come along. We might be isolated for now, but we'll be capable of far closer, more interesting bonds with anyone we do eventually locate. 
Alain de Botton
Therefore a wise prince ought to adopt such a course that his citizens will always in every sort and kind of circumstance have need of the state and of him, and then he will always find them faithful.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, 'How did he do it? He must be a genius!
Gian-Carlo Rota
Jay replied to the bird, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, my little bird. I'm sorry for leaving you alone. I'm sorry for hiding you away. Only now do I realize how much I've missed you.
Ilchi Lee
What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.
Umberto Eco
It is a curious and painful fact that almost all the completely futile treatments that have been believed in during the long history of medical folly have been such as caused acute suffering to the patient. When anesthetics were discovered, pious people considered them an attempt to evade the will of God. It was pointed out, however, that when God extracted Adam's rib He put him into a deep sleep. This proved that anesthetics are all right for men; women, however, ought to suffer, because of the curse of Eve.
Bertrand Russell