Quotes by Philosophers

Superiority is always detested.
Baltasar Gracián
When people are free to do as they please they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced and partakes of the nature of a protest.
Eric Hoffer
Success generally depends upon knowing how long it takes to succeed.
Charles de Montesquieu
Some enemies are part and parcel of our lives, we cannot destroy them without risking our own survival
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Thou shalt not unfollow someone, merely because they stopped following you.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
In the middle of a conversation, someone says to me out of the blue: "I wish you luck." I am astonished; but later I realize that these words connect up with his thoughts about me.And now they do not strike me as meaningless any more.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
Alain de Botton
Who is a Jew? A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by the knowledge of wrong done to other people.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
If a man happen to take it into his head to assassinate with his own hands, or with the sword of justice, those whom he calls heretics, that is, people who think, or perhaps only speak, differently upon a subject which neither party understands, he will be as much inclined to do this at one time as at another. Fanaticism never sleeps: it is never glutted: it is never stopped by philanthropy; for it makes a merit of trampling on philanthropy: it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into its service. Avarice, lust, and vengeance, have piety, benevolence, honour; fanaticism has nothing to oppose it.
Jeremy Bentham
Generally, people need less than a quarter of what they want.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Don't wound someone's eye trying to remove the twig from it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
A rainbow is a storm's masterpiece.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Falling in love is better than standing in hate.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers,things standing shall fall,but the moving ever shall stay.
Basava
The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life--knowing that under certain conditions it is not worth while to live. He is of a disposition to do men service, though he is ashamed to have a service done to him. To confer a kindness is a mark of superiority; to receive one is a mark of subordination... He does not take part in public displays... He is open in his dislikes and preferences; he talks and acts frankly, because of his contempt for men and things... He is never fired with admiration, since there is nothing great in his eyes. He cannot live in complaisance with others, except it be a friend; complaisance is the characteristic of a slave... He never feels malice, and always forgets and passes over injuries... He is not fond of talking... It is no concern of his that he should be praised, or that others should be blamed. He does not speak evil of others, even of his enemies, unless it be to themselves. His carriage is sedate, his voice deep, his speech measured; he is not given to hurry, for he is concerned about only a few things; he is not prone to vehemence, for he thinks nothing very important. A shrill voice and hasty steps come to a man through care... He bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of his circumstances, like a skillful general who marshals his limited forces with the strategy of war... He is his own best friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy, and is afraid of solitude.
Aristotle
It was evidently quite obvious to a powerful intellect like his that the one essential condition for a healthy society was equal distribution of goods - which I suspect is impossible under capitalism. For, when everyone's entitled to get as much for himself as he can, all available property, however much there is of it, is bound to fall into the hands of a small minority, which means that everyone else is poor.
Thomas More
A broke man’s lover doesn’t feel ‘loved’ on her Birthday, Christmas, and, on Valentine’s Day.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
To thee, to thee, my fire! Thou hast been burning in my heart all these futile years. If my life were a piece of gold it would come out of its trial brighter, but it is a trodden turf of grass, and nothing remains of it but this handful of ashes.
Rabindranath Tagore
All discourses and disciplines proceed from commitments and beliefs that are ultimately religious in nature. No scientific discourse (whether natural science or social science) simply discloses to us the facts of reality to which theology must submit; rather, every discourse is, in some sense, religious. The playing field has been leveled. Theology is most persistently postmodern when it rejects a lingering correlational false humility and instead speaks unapologetically from the the primacy of Christian revelation and the church's confessional language.
James K.A. Smith
It is most important for the practice of the Christian ministry, especially in its missionary activities toward those both within and without the Christian culture, to consider pagans, humanists, and Jews as members of the latent Spiritual Community and not as complete strangers who are invited into the Spiritual Community from outside. This insight serves as a powerful weapon against ecclesiastical and hierarchical arrogance.
Paul Tillich
Daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh; the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time.
Umberto Eco
Smile, even when others do not.Care, even when others will not.Love, even when others could not.Give, even when others cannot.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If our eyes could see everything, every man would see his own faults.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Be like a rose; no matter how many thorns you encounter in life, bloom.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The more civilized people are, the more honorable working hard is to them. As a result, the more civilized we get, the less we live.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A phone call should be a convenience to the caller, not an inconvenience to the called.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
A politician is a man in his natural state
Bangambiki Habyarimana
An anarchist is someone who rejects the curious notion that crimes become virtues as they grow in size.
Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski
The first enslaving illusion is the idea that people are born to be consumers and that they can attain any of their goals by purchasing goods and services....What people do or make but will not or cannot put up for sale is as immeasurable and as invaluable for the economy as the oxygen they breathe.
Ivan Illich
The more laws and restrictions there are,The poorer people become....The more rules and regulations,The more thieves and robbers.
Lao Tzu
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
I've nothing against eye make-up and lipstick. But the fact is that we’re actually living on a planet in space. For me that’s an extraordinary thought. It’s mind-boggling just to think about the existence of space at all. But there are girls who can’t see the universe for eye liner.
Jostein Gaarder
My heart goes out to some of those rather hostile yet highly intelligent individuals who may see problems really because they have solutions. That hostility is learned in defense; not offense. An often stubborn and prideful world, in its self-destructive, temporary bliss of ignorance, may be violently resistant to the watchful mind.
Criss Jami
You can only manage to convince a person to admit to being wrong, not ignorant, arrogant, or stupid.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I have argued that when we encounter other humans we experience them first as persons, and cannot help but do so. This means that in order to see a human person as an animal or organism we must abstract from the totality of our experience. My suggestion is that we take this fact seriously in understanding the ontology of everyday objects. According to this proposal a “human animal” or “human organism” is not a thing in its own right, but rather a particular perspective we take on ourselves and our lives, one that attends only to our purely biological functions.
Marya Schechtman
Illusory universality is the universality of the art of the culture industry, it is the universality of the homogeneous same, an art which no longer even promises happiness but only provides easy amusement as relief from labour.
J.M. Bernstein
To most Americans, a dog is a potential mate. To some Chinese, a dog is potential meat.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
We are all born agnostics. Atheism and theism is sold to us.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
To a blind man, pawn shop and porn shop are one. To an unintelligent man, oversleeping and sleeping over are opposites.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Or how does it happen that trade, which after all is nothing more than the exchange of products of various individuals and countries, rules the whole world through the relation of supply and demand—a relation which, as an English economist says, hovers over the earth like the fate of the ancients, and with invisible hand allots fortune and misfortune to men, sets up empires and overthrows empires, causes nations to rise and to disappear—while with the abolition of the basis of private property, with the communistic regulation of production (and implicit in this, the destruction of the alien relation between men and what they themselves produce), the power of the relation of supply and demand is dissolved into nothing, and men get exchange, production, the mode of their mutual relation, under their own control again?
Karl Marx
Some people's theologies come across as blatantly wrong when weighed against what is revealed in Scripture. However God has mercy on those who may be wrong but genuinely seek understanding before seeking themselves.
Criss Jami
examination of its own history and of the forms of thought given the name “philosophy” indicates that “philosophy” has itself borne many fundamentally different meanings through the years, and from one school or movement to another.
Gregory B. Sadler
The 2 extremes, neither one worse than the other: the result of bad religion is self-loathing and violence; the result of bad spirituality is self-worship and narcissism.
Criss Jami
Maths is at only one remove from magic.
Neel Burton
Some of our friends are our friends only because we used to be friends.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Love's light conquers hate's darkness.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Keep negative people in your prayers, not in your life.
Matshona Dhliwayo
You are believing not in your god but in yourself if your god knows no better than you do...and yet, in this alone, I am afraid, you have already been fooling yourself.
Criss Jami
Give me matter, and I will construct a world out of it!
Immanuel Kant
We write, not because we claim to know more than others, but perhaps because we want to know more than others. Writers are explorers
Bangambiki Habyarimana
Pride is born as a mountaintop on a valley, but dies as an abyss in which it is too deep and too dark to see the better.
Criss Jami
The foundation of morality on the human sentiments of what is acceptable behavior versus repulsive behavior has always made morals susceptible to change. Much of what was repulsive 100 years ago is normal today, and - although it may be a slippery slope - what is repulsive today is possible to be normal 100 years into tomorrow; the human standard has always been but to push the envelope. In this way, all generations are linked, and one can only hope that every extremist, self-proclaimed progressive is considering this ultimate 'Utopia' to which his kindness will lead at the end of the chain.
Criss Jami
You cannot marry your past without divorcing your future.
Matshona Dhliwayo
Don't cry over spilt milk when you can milk another cow.
Matshona Dhliwayo
If you touch a wound while it is healing, you will prolong it.
Matshona Dhliwayo
The statue was of a young man with a tall, gaunt body and an angular face. He held his head as if he faced a challenge and found joy in his capacity to meet it.
Ayn Rand
Some women would not have contracted an STD or STDs had they not been on the pill.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Every time someone starts a project he is considered nuts, until he beats all the odds and laughs the last.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
In the modern Christian attempt to take a stand as Christ did, and maybe for others, win the approval of the world, the Christian will often think that it consists of targeting and demoralizing fellow Christians and only fellow Christians. It is one thing to stand against religious hypocrisy when one sees it, but it is another to go on snorting at anything or anyone who might seem 'too Christian' to us. The irony is that by doing this we are further advocating hypocrisy and 'half-hearted Christians'.
Criss Jami
The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say.
Criss Jami