Quotes by Philosophers - Page 331

Confident sheep overcome insecure wolves.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The only pride of her workday was not that it had been lived, but that it had been survived. It was wrong, she thought, it was viciously wrong that one should ever be forced to say that about any hour of one's life.
Ayn Rand
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
Voltaire
[I]t must be owned, that liberty is the perfection of civil society; but still authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence: and in those contests, which so often take place between the one and the other, the latter may, on that account, challenge the preference. Unless perhaps one may say (and it may be said with some reason) that a circumstance, which is essential to the existence of civil society, must always support itself, and needs be guarded with less jealousy, than one that contributes only to its perfection, which the indolence of men is so apt to neglect, or their ignorance to overlook.
David Hume
If a man does not keep pace with hiscompanions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Lethim step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree oran oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer?
Henry David Thoreau
When I hear that "Possession is the grave of love," I remember that a religion may begin with the resurrection.
F.H. Bradley
As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
Albert Camus
At a great distance appeared with the same pomp the sheep of Thebes, the dog of Bubastis, the cat of Phoebe, the crocodile of Arsinoe, the goat of Mendes, and all the inferior gods of Egypt, who came to pay homage to the great ox, to the mighty Apis, as powerful as Isis, Osiris, and Horus, united together.In the midst of the demi-gods, forty priests carried an enormous basket, filled with sacred onions. These were, it is true, gods, but they resembled onions very much.("The White Bull")
Voltaire
There is never a moment where I find Trump persuasive. When I look at him I see a man without any inner life. I see the most superficial person on Earth. This is a guy who has been totally hollowed out by greed and self regard and delusion. The way he talks about himself; if I caught some sort of brain virus and I started talking about myself the way Trump talks about himself, I would throw myself out a fucking window. That barely overstates it. Do you remember that scene at the end of the in The Exorcist where the priest is driving out the devil from Linda Blair and the devil comes into him and he just hurls himself out the window to end all the madness? Well, it would be like that. - Sam Harris
Sam Harris
A celebrity is an object that the media manufactures today, just so they have a subject tomorrow.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I couldn't quite understand how an ordinary man's good qualities could become crushing accusations against a guilty man.
Albert Camus
Indeed, the only cause of their [Rome] perishing was that they chose for their protectors gods condemned to perish.
Augustine of Hippo
The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
Jeremy Bentham
Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. (Don't overdo it.)
Lao-Tsze
The most beautiful people are those who bring out the beauty in others.
Matshona Dhliwayo
God will not look you over for medals degrees or diplomas but for scars!
Elbert Hubbard
Nature cannot be commanded except by being obeyed.
Francis Bacon
Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
One moment of prayer, of weak worship, confused contrition, tepid thanksgiving, or pitiful petition will bring us closer to God than all the books of theology in the world.
Peter Kreeft
Unlike wealth, fame makes it easier for some men and more difficult for some to sleep around.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-Beings and other riff-raff into highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments. Only since then has progress in communications really got into its stride. Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, more trusting, if possible, than even their contemporaries, but only for the dead God?
Theodor W. Adorno
One who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past, who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never do anything that makes others happy.
Friedrich Nietzsche
You cannot aspire for greatness and fit in at the same time.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Millions of beauties and splendors are waiting for you. You go on moving around and around, never entering into the temple of life. The door is the heart.
Osho
Many writers write because they’ve been there, seen that, did it and burnt their fingers
Bangambiki Habyarimana
A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of man is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day.
Jean Vanier
You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. you see a women, you think that one day she'll be old, only you don't see her grow old. But there are moments when you think you see her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her: this is the feeling of adventure.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Truth is not fully explosive, but purely electric. You don't blow the world up with the truth; you shock it into motion.
Criss Jami
Please always see the bright side of everything.
P.R. Sarkar (Shrii Shrii A’nandamu’rti)
There is such a thing as righteous judgment, but it seems that lately the word 'judgment' has become a curse word, period. The issue isn't whether or not we're insightful enough to avoid being judgmental, but whether or not we're secure enough to accept being judged. It is inevitable for every conscious human being to judge. It may spring from insight and experience and sincerity, and in such cases, it is quite beneficial on the receiving end.
Criss Jami
Strive to be more than number one—strive to be the greatest number one.
Matshona Dhliwayo
A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
Isabel Paterson
When a storm shows up, always remind yourself a rainbow is hiding behind it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
Jean-Paul Sartre
A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau
What pulls the strings is the force hidden within there lies ... the real man.
Marcus Aurelius
no man will survive who genuinely opposes you or any other crowd and prevents the occurrence of many unjust and illegal happenings in the city. A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time
Plato
It must be said that charity can, in no way, exist along with mortal sin.
Thomas Aquinas
Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.
Lao Tzu
The Secret of Happiness is to admire without desiring. And that is not happiness.
F.H. Bradley
Dating a wo/man with a child is adoption … without the paperwork.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I wonder why it is that the countries with the most nobles also have the most misery?
Francis Bacon
In the end, only God can see the heart of an individual and distinguish the difference between legalistic deadweight and the passion of holy solemnity.
Criss Jami
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.
Michel de Montaigne
Acting responsibly is not a matter of strengthening our reason but of deepening our feelings for the welfare of others.
Jostein Gaarder
A man’s mind is hidden in his writings: criticism brings it to light.
Solomon ibn Gabirol
If you want to punish a sage lock him in the same room with a fool.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you will cease to be so.
John Stuart Mill
The average adult has had sex innumerable times more than they have formed an opinion of their own.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world's happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness.
Augustine of Hippo
What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.
Arthur Schopenhauer
There are times when creation can be achieved only through destruction. The urge to destroy is then a creative urge.
Bakunin
The man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing.
Seneca
Nothing common can seem worthy of you.
Cicero
For the grace of bearing life's inevitable evils is itself agood, and makes goodness arise even from evils byopposing them or enduring them with courage.
A.C. Grayling
Some people are each holding on to a lover of theirs who no longer loves them and/or who they no longer love, only because they do not want to have a reason or another reason to be jealous of the person who would eventually be their lover if they let go of them.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The more you know, the less you talk. The less you talk, the more you know.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There are two kinds of warriors:those on the battlefield,and those in the boardroom;both are out to win.But the age of King Alexander has gone,and the age of Bill Gates has come.
Matshona Dhliwayo
No,' said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; 'I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry.' 'Well,' said Michael quietly, 'will you tell me one thing? Which of us has ever tried it?
G.K. Chesterton
When he [Malevranche] happened to find Descartes' book entitled Man in a book shop on the rue Saint Jaques, he leafed through it, bought it and "read it with so much pleasure that he was forced at times to interrupt his reading, so loud were the beatings of his heart due to the extreme pleasure he had in doing so". Those who never put down a book of erudition, science or philosophy, to catch their breath, so to speak, and recover from the strong emotion they experience, certainly ignore of of the most exquisite pleasures of intellectual life.
Étienne Gilson