Quotes About Philosophy

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

High thoughts must have high language.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

The true end of tragedy is to purify the passions.

Happiness is an expression of the soul in considered actions.

Since we think we understand when we know the explanation, and there are four types of explanation (one, what it is to be a thing; one, that if certain things hold it is necessary that this does; another, what initiated the change; and fourth, the aim), all these are proved through the middle term.

It was through the feeling of wonder that men now and at first began to philosophize.

Happiness is prosperity combined with virtue.

Madness is badness of spirit, when one seeks profit from all sources.

Time is not composed of indivisible nows any more than any other magnitude is composed of indivisibles.

If then it be possible that one contrary should exist, or be called into existence, the other contrary will also appear to be possible.

I call that law universal, which is conformable merely to dictates of nature; for there does exist naturally an universal sense of right and wrong, which, in a certain degree, all intuitively divine, even should no intercourse with each other, nor any compact have existed.

Where the interests of truth are at actual stake, we ought, perhaps, to sacrifice even that which is our own--if, at least, we are to lay any claim to a philosophic spirit.

Both excess and defect are alike prejudicial to moral virtue.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.

Moral virtue is ... a mean between two vices, that of excess and that of defect, and ... it is no small task to hit the mean in each case, as it is not, for example, any chance comer, but only the geometer, who can find the center of a given circle.

Probable impossibilities are always to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Reason ... governs like a just and lawful prince, and the little community of man is thus held together and sustained.

Happiness is a thing which calls for honor rather than for praise.

Nor does the argument about the contrary seem to be well urged. It does not follow, they say, because pain is an evil, that pleasure is a good; for the opposite to evil may be not a good, but some other evil, and both evil and good may stand opposed to something which is neither one nor the other.

There are, then, three states of mind ... two vices--that of excess, and that of defect; and one virtue--the mean; and all these are in a certain sense opposed to one another; for the extremes are not only opposed to the mean, but also to one another; and the mean is opposed to the extremes.

For in man, and in man alone, owing to is erect attitude, the upper part of the body is turned toward the upper part of the universe; while in other animals it is turned neither to this nor to the lower aspects, but in a direction midway between the two.

Thought is required wherever a statement is proved, or, it may be, a general truth enunciated.

But tangible differ from visible and sonorous impressions, in that the latter are perceived by the medium acting in some way upon us, while the former are perceived, not by, but together with, the medium, like a man who is struck through his shield--for it is not the shield which, having been struck, strikes him, but the shield and he are simultaneously struck together.