Quotes by Philosophers - Page 52

One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.
Michel de Montaigne
Most people would die sooner than think in fact they do.
Bertrand Russell
There is no man so blessed that some who stand by his deathbed won't hail the occasion with delight.
Marcus Aurelius
In Heaven all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.
Epicurus
The question is whether suicide is the way out or the way in.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As men we are all equal in the presence of death.
Publilius Syrus
No man in his senses will dance.
Cicero
No one reaches a high position without daring.
Syrus
Who dares nothing need hope for nothing.
Friedrich von Schiller
A timid person is frightened before a danger a coward during the time and a courageous person afterwards.
Jean Paul Richter
Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.
Bertrand Russell
There is nothing to which men while they have food and drink cannot reconcile themselves.
George Santayana
A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Insanity in individuals is rare - but in groups parties nations and epochs it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche
When a hundred men stand together each of them loses his mind and gets another one.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself.
Bertrand Russell
The time when most of all you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.
Epicurus
All cruelty springs from weakness.
Seneca
Reading makes a full man conference a ready man and writing an exact man.
Sir Francis Bacon
Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.
Søren Kierkegaard
Culture with us ends in headache.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of criticism founded upon appreciation of beauty and of intellectual distinction and of duty.
Alfred North Whitehead
To escape criticism - do nothing say nothing be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
We enact many laws that manufacture criminals and then a few that punish them.
Abraham Tucker
So when the crisis is upon you remember that God like a trainer of wrestlers has matched you with a tough and stalwart antagonist... that you may prove a victor at the Great Games.
Epictetus
Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem.
Eric Hoffer
Speaking generally punishment hardens and numbs it produces concentration it sharpens the consciousness of alienation it strengthens the power of resistance.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard chiefly I think because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Bertrand Russell
All punishment is mischief. All punishment in itself is evil.
Jeremy Bentham
Fear succeeds crime - it is its punishment.
Voltaire
He only may chastise who loves.
Rabindranath Tagore
It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.
Eric Hoffer
There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.
Henri Bergson
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.
Voltaire
The world embarrasses me and I cannot dream That this watch exists and has no watchmaker.
Voltaire
God is in the world or nowhere creating continually in us and around us. Insofar as man partakes of this creative process does he partake of the divine of God and that participation is his immortality ....
Alfred North Whitehead
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot step twice into the same river for other waters are continually flowing on.
Heraclitus
One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.
Niccolò Machiavelli
It's a bad plan that can't be changed.
Publilius Syrus
Since changes are going on anyway the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Condi-tions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in they are to be utilized and directed.
John Dewey
Even in slight things the experience of the new is rarely without some stirring of foreboding.
Eric Hoffer
A stiff attitude is one of the phenomena of rigor mortis.
Henry S. Haskins
Obstinacy and heat in sticking to one's opinions is the surest proof of stupidity. Is there anything so cocksure so immovable so disdainful so contemplative so solemn and serious as an ass?
Michel de Montaigne
The consistent thinker ... is either a walking mummy or else if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality a fanatical monomaniac.
Aldous Huxley
Consistency is contrary to nature contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
Aldous Huxley
Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body.
Aldous Huxley
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. ... Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again though it contradicts everything you said today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Friedrich Nietzsche
New opinions are always suspected and usually opposed without any other reason but because they are not already common.
John Locke
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
William James
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
Blaise Pascal
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The death of dogma is the birth of reality.
Immanuel Kant
Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries.
José Ortega y Gasset
If anyone accuses me of contradicting myself I reply: Because I have been wrong once or oftener I do not aspire to be always wrong.
Vauvenargues
I wish to say what I think and feel today with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today is not yesterday how can our works and thoughts if they are always to be the fittest continue always the same? Change indeed is painful yet ever needful.
Thomas Carlyle