Quotes About Philosophy

Virtually all men of action incline to Fatality just as most thinkers incline to Providence.

He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no man, and quench his reasonable soul, before he can say to himself, there is no God.

Whether religion be true or false, it must be necessarily granted to be the only wise principle and safe hypothesis for a man to live and die by.

If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.

The wise man puts himself last and finds himself first.

Man is ruled by Earth. Earth is ruled by Heaven. Heaven is ruled by the Way. The Way is ruled by itself.

Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?

The marvelous thing is that for thousands of years people have continued questioning and searching and ultimately concluding that reasons for certain occurrences are not given to man to know.

Man is a greater miracle than any god he ever invented.

If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?.

Why do people argue? Even the wisest of men have not found God through argument! Is God a subject for argument?

Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy.

Happiness presents itself to man, wearing the crown of sorrow on its head. He who welcomes it must also welcome sorrow.

Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and which any honest man will ask himself, is whether a doctrine is true or false.

It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one.

Given that we glimpse what distinguishes man from the beast, is there anything that distinguishes woman from man?

When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists.

The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.

Nothing is real beyond imaginative patterns men make of reality.

The perfect man of old looked after himself first before looking to help others.

It is regrettable that, among the Rights of Man, the right of contradicting oneself has been forgotten.

The superior man is intelligently, not blindly, faithful.

The wise man looks at death with honesty, dignity and calm, recognizing that the tragedy it brings is inherent in the great gift of life.