Quotes About Philosophy

Now ends clearly differ from one another. For, firstly, in some cases the end is an act, while in others it is a material result beyond and besides that act. And, where the action involves any such end beyond itself, this end is of necessity better than is the act by which it is produced.

Wealth is clearly not the absolute good of which we are in search, for it is a utility, and only desirable as a means.

Happiness consists in the consciousness of a life in which the highest Virtue is actively manifested.

Abstract accuracy is no more to be expected in all philosophic treatises than in all products of art, and noble and just acts with which the art political is concerned admit of such great variation and of so many differences that they have been held to depend upon conventional rather than upon real distinctions.

One may perhaps be led to suppose that it is virtue that is the end of the statesman's life. Yet even virtue itself would seem to fall short of being an absolute end.

We must as a second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

If happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Every science and every inquiry, and similarly every activity and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.

The final cause, then, produces motion through being loved.

While both [Plato and truth] are dear, piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is Nature's way.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

It is of itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.

A man married to the right woman will be happy. A man married to the wrong woman will be a philosopher.

All proofs rest on premises.

Law is mind without reason.

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.