Quotes by Philosophers - Page 18

Man is by nature a civic animal.
Aristotle
Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness.
Albert Camus
Politics is the gizzard of society full of gut and gravel.
Henry David Thoreau
There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics for then we get rid of cant and hypocrisy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
Plato
All I know is I'm not a Marxist.
Karl Marx
Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problems of wheat.
Socrates
Your representative owes you not his industry only but his judgement and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Edmund Burke
A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve taken together would be my standard of a statesman.
Edmund Burke
What is the test of good manners? Being able to bear patiently with bad ones.
Solomon ibn Gabirol
Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
Eric Hoffer
A man must have very eminent qualities to hold his own without being polite.
Jean de La Bruyère
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is always a best way of doing everything if it be only to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skilfully.
Aristotle
(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects whether moral or intellectual shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
George Santayana
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry that is prose - words in their best order poetry - the best words in their best order.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.
G.K. Chesterton
Colour which is the poet's wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
Henry David Thoreau
Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every man is a poet when he is in love.
Plato
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
Voltaire
The man is either mad or he is making verses.
Horace
Let your poem be kept nine years.
Horace
All men are poets at heart.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poetry therefore we will call Musical Thought.
Thomas Carlyle
When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors Landor replies "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Life is not about significant details illuminated in a flash fixed forever. Photographs are.
Susan Sontag
Be a philosopher but amid all your philosophy be still a man.
David Hume
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
Sir Francis Bacon
The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important objects of philosophy.
Voltaire
Queen of arts and daughter of heaven.
Edmund Burke
Instead of just recording reality photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism.
Susan Sontag
The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality and eventually in one's own.
Susan Sontag
To teach how to live with uncertainty and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can still do for those who study it.
Bertrand Russell
Three passions simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
Bertrand Russell
Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the conflicts between men a search for their cause a condemnation of mere opinion .. . and the discovery of a standard of judgement.
Epictetus
Philosophy is doubt.
Michel de Montaigne
Science is what you know philosophy is what you don't know.
Bertrand Russell
In philosophy an individual is becoming himself.
Bernard Lonergan
All philosophy lies in two words sustain and abstain.
Epictetus
The unrest which keeps the never-stopping clock metaphysics going is the thought that the non-existence of this world is just as possible as its existence.
William James
It takes a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.
Alfred North Whitehead
Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity but in being uninteresting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do what you love. Know your own bone gnaw at it bury it unearth it and gnaw it still.
Henry David Thoreau
A fair exterior is a silent recommendation.
Publilius Syrus
The more a human being feels himself a self tries to intensify this self and reach a never-attainable perfection the more drastically he steps out of the center of being.
Eugene Herrigel
If peace cannot be maintained with honor it is no longer peace.
Lord Russell
I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.
Cicero
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James
The power which resides in man is new in nature and none but he knows what that is which he can do nor does he until he has tried.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matter compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Out of difficulties grow miracles.
Jean de La Bruyère
Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things man will not find peace.
Albert Schweitzer
Once you hear the details of victory it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.
Jean-Paul Sartre