Quotes About Philosophy

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.

Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.

Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.

Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and the sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

Whatever has a tendency to promote the civil intercourse of nations by an exchange of benefits is a subject as worthy of philosophy as of politics.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today.

I believe in the gods. Or rather, I believe that I believe in the gods. But I don't believe that they are great brooding presences watching over us; I believe they are completely absent-minded.

A man can believe in a considerable deal of rubbish, and yet go about his daily work in a rational and cheerful manner.

Nothing befalls a man except what is in his nature to endure.

It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a Being beyond its limits capable of creating it.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream That this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.

Rather suffer than die is man's motto.

Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.

Logic pervades the world; the limits of the world are also the limits of logic.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed.

To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?

We are not certain, we are never certain.

Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this, our life!

Doubt is not a pleasant state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

There is one thing certain, namely, that we can have nothing certain; therefore it is not certain that we can have nothing certain.

To teach how to live with uncertainty, yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy can do.

To be ambitious for wealth, and yet always expecting to be poor; to be always doubting your ability to get what you long for, is like trying to reach east by traveling west. There is no philosophy which will help a man to succeed when he is always doubting his ability to do so, and thus attracting failure. No matter how hard you work for success, if your thought is saturated with the fear of failure, it will kill your efforts, neutralize your endeavors and make success impossible.