Quotes About Philosophy

By Hercules! I prefer to err with Plato, whom I know how much you value, than to be right in the company of such men.

A man with lofty ideas is an uncomfortable neighbor.

The wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can.

While men believe themselves to be seeking truth for its own sake, they are in fact seeking life in truth.

Immortality no longer interests the weary old man at all.

You cannot of yourself move your arm or alter your position, situation, posture, do to other men good or evil, or effect the least change in the world.

Although a man may have no jurisdiction over the fact of his existence, he can hold supreme command over the meaning of existence for him.

How much does a man live, after all?/ Does he live a thousand days, or one only? For a week, or for several centuries?/ How long does a man spend dying?/ What does it mean to say 'for ever'?

You may be sure, dear Crito, that inaccurate language is not only in itself a mistake: it implants evil in men's souls.

It is fear and terror that make all men brave, except the philosophers. Yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice.

May I deem the wise man rich, and may I have such a portion of gold as none but a prudent man can either bear or employ.

. . . the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth.

The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it.

The fatal errors of life are not due to man's being unreasonable: an unreasonable moment may be one's finest moment. They are due to man's being logical.

That is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual; the wise man wonders at the usual.

Wise is the man who contents himself with the spectacle of the world.

The complete man, then, is the "lover" added to the scientist; the rhetorician to the dialectician.

Upon the great questions of origin, of destiny, of immortality, of . . . other worlds, every honest man must say, 'I do not know.' Upon these questions, this is the creed of intelligence.

No sane man can afford to dispense with debilitating pleasures; no ascetic can be considered reliably sane.

If men had known how to permeate the soul with mathematics in the right way in the arithmetic lessons during these past years, we should not now have Bolshevism in Eastern Europe.

Under capitalism, man oppresses man. But under socialism, it's the other way around.

We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

What is more insane than to vent on senseless things the anger that is felt towards men?