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Philosophy Quotes

Life / Living  Happiness / Ideals  Knowledge / Truth  Mind  Attitude  Other  Links

Life / Living —————————————————————————————————————-

The meaning of life is to give life meaning.

Ken Hudgins

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

William James

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.

Dorothy Thompson

We cannot put off living until we are ready. 

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

Marie Curie

Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward. 

Soren Kierkegaard

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Oscar Wilde

It's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Abraham Lincoln

Our lives are like a candle in the wind.

Carl Sandburg

Skin is a covering for our immortality.

Ever Garrison

Death is not the worst than can happen to men.

Plato

There are some remedies worse than the disease.

Publilius Syrus

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.

William James

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates

I am a part of all that I have met.

Alfred Tennyson

I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.

Confucius

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise.  Seek what they sought.

Matsuo Basho

The obstacle is the path.

Zen Proverb

Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles. 

Confucius

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons. 

Aristotle

Happiness / Ideals —————————————————————————————————–

We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others, by their acts.

Harold Nicolson

Our ideals resemble the stars, no one will ever be able to touch them. But the men who take them for guides, will undoubtedly reach their goal.

Carl Schurz 

Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.

Immanuel Kant

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. 

Ayn Rand

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

Anne Frank

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

Benjamin Disraeli

Seeking is not always the way to find. 

Augustus William Hare

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness. 

Chuang Tzu

We waste a lot of time running after people we could have caught by just standing still.

Mignon McLaughlin

Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor.

Benjamin Franklin

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Abraham Lincoln

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Henry David Thoreau

Knowledge / Truth —————————————————————————————————–

There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance. 

Socrates

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. 

Confucius

True knowledge lies in knowing how to live. 

Baltasar Gracian

Believe those who are seeking the truth.  Doubt those who find it.  

Andre Gide

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience. 

John Locke

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

James Thurber

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.

Stanislaus Lescynski

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

Aristotle

A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.

Lee Segall

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Bertrand Russell

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

William James

Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.

Aesop

Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day. 

Polish Proberb

There's more to the truth than just the facts.

Author Unknown

Three things cannot be long hidden, the sun, the moon, and the truth.

Buddha

Mind —————————————————————————————————————————

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Anais Nin

I think, therefore I am.

Rene Descartes

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

Buddha

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.

John Milton

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.

Unknown Author

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

Rene Descartes

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

Henri Louis Bergson

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. 

Alfred North Whitehead 

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Bertrand Russell

Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow.

Bill Moyers

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. 

Bertrand Russell

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. 

Author Unknown

Attitude ———————————————————————————————————————-

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

Michelangelo

To know the height of a mountain, one must climb it.

Augustus William Hare

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

John Wooden

It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.

Moliere

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.

Voltaire

You will never achieve what you never begin.

Andre Gide

The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Lao Tzu

Don't wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it.

Unknown Author

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

Andre Gide

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.

Aesop

If you don't know where you are going, you can never get lost.

Herb Cohen

When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.

Kenneth Kaunda

Win by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.

Ralph Ellison

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second.

William James

You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough.

William Blake

Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.

John Dewey

Other ————————————————————————————————————————–

Liberty consists in doing what one desires.

John Stuart Mill

We do not do what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are.

Jean-Paul Sartre

People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights.

Indira Gandhi

Admiration and familiarity are strangers.

George Sand

Every problem contains the seeds of its own solution.

Stanley Arnold

A stumble may prevent a fall.

English Proverb 

A thousand men can't undress a naked man.

Greek Proverb 

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground. 

Buddha

Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying. 

Baba Ram Dass

No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.

Zen Proverb 

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Confucius

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Mark Twain

Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.

James Matthew Barrie

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.

Buddha

Life / Living  Happiness / Ideals  Knowledge / Truth  Mind  Attitude  Other  Links

www.stanford.edu : Encyclopedia of philosophy. Search by topic or philosopher.

www.ox.ac.uk : A to Z index of leading philosophers.

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