Quotes by Philosophers - Page 17

Power corrupts the few while weakness corrupts the many.
Eric Hoffer
He who has great power should use it lightly.
Seneca
The tyrant dies and his rule is over the martyr dies and his rule begins.
Søren Kierkegaard
The only justification in the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary to be used.
Alfred North Whitehead
Many a man's strength is in opposition and when he faileth he groweth out of use.
Francis Bacon
It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.
Henry David Thoreau
Not hammer strokes but dance of the water sings the pebbles into perfection.
Rabindranath Tagore
A good indignation brings out all one's powers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.
Jean-Paul Sartre
The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility.
Eric Hoffer
The greatest man in history was the poorest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.
Edmund Burke
Of a rich man who was mean and niggardly he said "That man does hot possess his estate but his estate possesses him."
Diogenes
Think like a man of action act like a man of thought.
Henri Bergson
Skill to do comes of doing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We become just by performing just actions temperate by performing temperate actions brave by performing brave actions.
Aristotle
Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.
René Descartes
Sunshine is delicious rain is refreshing wind braces us up snow is exhilarating there is really no such thing as bad weather only different kinds of good weather.
John Ruskin
If you wish to live a life free from sorrow think of what is going to happen as if it had already happened.
Epictetus
We must laugh before we are happy for fear of dying without having laughed at all.
Jean de La Bruyère
If you want a quality act as if you already had it.
William James
Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult and difficult as if they were easy in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep in the other that it may not be dismayed.
Baltasar Gracián
To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and furthermore it is to act as if He did exist.
Miguel de Unamuno
However much we guard against it we tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us.
Eric Hoffer
Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.
Felix Adler
There are certain people who so ardently and passionately desire a thing that from dread of losing it they leave nothing undone to make them lose it.
Jean de La Bruyère
The thing we fear we bring to pass.
Elbert Hubbard
Where much is expected from an individual he may rise to the level of events and make the dream come true.
Elbert Hubbard
He who has not faith in others shall find no faith in them.
Lao Tzu
He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears.
Michel de Montaigne
Dangers by being despised grow great.
Edmund Burke
We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.
Elbert Hubbard
Trust men and they will be true to you treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are made kind by being kind.
Eric Hoffer
A man is a method a progressive arrangement a selecting principle gathering his like unto him wherever he goes. What you are comes to you.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
One is not born a genius one becomes a genius.
Simone de Beauvoir
If you haven't been happy very young you can still be happy later on but it's much harder. You need more luck.
Simone de Beauvoir
Events circumstances etc. have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.
Henry David Thoreau
Optimism is essential to achievement and is also the foundation of courage and of true progress.
Nicholas Murray Butler
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Ayn Rand
Every noble work is at first impossible.
Thomas Carlyle
There are people who have an appetite for grief pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and dishevelled desolation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
L. P. Jacks
A happy life consists in tranquility of mind.
Cicero
The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.
David Hume
Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.
Ayn Rand
The soul contains the event that shall befall it for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great men are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force that thoughts rule the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As a man thinketh so is he and as a man chooseth so is he.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts ... take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
Marcus Aurelius
A man's life is what his thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Although none of the rules for becoming alive is valid it is healthy to keep on formulating them.
Susan Sontag
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
Henry David Thoreau
The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise.
Henry David Thoreau
People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.
William James
Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create that fact.
William James
Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that ensures the successful outcome of our venture.
William James