Quotes by Philosophers - Page 35

Life is an offensive directed against the repetitious mechanism of the universe.
Alfred North Whitehead
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward but he who has hope for it is a fool.
Albert Camus
The whole of what we know is a system of compensations. Each suffering is rewarded each sacrifice is made up every debt is paid.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer but rather what they miss.
Thomas Carlyle
The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Unless you can find some sort of loyalty you cannot find unity and peace in your active living.
Josiah Royce
Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.
Søren Kierkegaard
If there is a sin against life it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
Albert Camus
The natural rhythm of human life is routine punctuated by orgies.
Aldous Huxley
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Real life is to most men a long second best a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
Bertrand Russell
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party when the masks are dropped.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The character of human life like the character of the human condition like the character of all life is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil the true and false the creative and destructive forces - both individual and social.
Paul Tillich
Life is the only art that we are required to practise without preparation and without being allowed the preliminary trials the failures and botches that are essential for the training of a mere beginner.
Lewis Mumford
A tragedy means always a man's struggle with that which is stronger than man.
G.K. Chesterton
In the morning a man walks with his whole body in the evening only with his legs.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Once freedom lights its beacon in a man's heart the gods are powerless against him.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
Baron de Montesquieu
We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free.
Cicero
Equality is the result of human organization. We are not born equal.
Hannah Arendt
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have for example freedom of thought instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.
Søren Kierkegaard
The effect of liberty on individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do before we risk congratulations.
Edmund Burke
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Edmund Burke
I understand by 'freedom of spirit' something quite definite - the unconditional will to say No where it is dangerous to say No.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.
Eric Hoffer
Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must like men undergo the fatigue of supporting it.
Thomas Paine
Liberality consists less in giving much than in giving at the right moment.
Jean de La Bruyère
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.
John Stuart Mill
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of their country but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered yet we have this consolation with us that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph.
Thomas Paine
The lie is a condition of life.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Leisure is the mother of philosophy.
Thomas Hobbes
I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
Henry David Thoreau
All men are born truthful and die liars.
Vauvenargues
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
Pascal
Men learn while they teach.
Seneca
Reading maketh a full man conference a ready man and writing an exact man.
Sir Francis Bacon
If you shoot at a king you must kill him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As for the best leaders the people do not notice their existence. The next best the people honour and praise. The next the people fear and the next the people hate. When the best leader's work is done the people say 'we did it ourselves!'
Lao Tzu
The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.
Albert Camus
To lead the people walk behind them.
Lao Tzu
The lazy are always wanting to do something.
Vauvenargues
There is no man so good who were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
Michel Montaigne
Whatever is enforced by command is more imputed to him who exacts than to him who performs.
Michel de Montaigne
When you have no basis for an argument abuse the plaintiff.
Cicero
Revenge is a kind of wild justice which the more man's nature runs to the more ought law to weed it out.
Francis Bacon
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
Jeremy Bentham
Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons strategems and spoils but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.
Thomas Carlyle
Better know nothing than half-know many things.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Know thyself.
Socrates
As for me all I know is that I know nothing.
Socrates
If a man own land the land owns him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
Bertrand Russell
In all affairs love religion politics or business it's a healthy idea now and then to hang a question mark on things you have long taken for granted.
Bertrand Russell
The only good is knowledge and the only evil ignorance.
Diogenes
Knowledge is power.
Francis Bacon
He who knows others is learned He who knows himself is wise.
Lao-Tsze
I take all knowledge to be my province.
Sir Francis Bacon