Quotes About Philosophy

Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.

The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy.

The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.

the world is my idea

A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be true.

Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are the tormented souls. - On Religion

To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.

If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her; on the contrary, she is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favors.

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.

Whatever torch we kindle, and whatever space it may illuminate, our horizon will always remain encircled by the depth of night.

If God made this world, then i would not want to be the God. It is full of misery and distress that it breaks my heart.

If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world.

I cannot here withhold the statement that optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbor nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the most unspeakable sufferings of mankind.

Other people's heads are too wretched a place for true happiness to have its seat.

Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will.

Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy, wherefore Socrates has defined the latter as ??????? ??????. Indeed without death men would scarcely philosophise.

Every light can be extinguished. The intellect is a light. Therefore it can, be extinguished.

If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the miseries of boredom.

universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.

There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and, at the same time, all-powerful Being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be.

For what a man is in himself, what accompanies him when he is alone, what no one can give or take away, is obviously more essential to him than everything he has in the way of possessions, or even what he may be in the eyes of the world. An intellectual man in complete solitude has excellent entertainment in his own thoughts and fancies, while no amount of diversity or social pleasure, theatres, excursions and amusements, can ward off boredom from a dullard.

How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that is moves me to action?