Quotes by Philosophers - Page 54

Courage to be is the key to revelatory power of the feminist revolution.
Mary Daly
Nothing but courage can guide life.
Vauvenargues
The Ancient Mariner said to Neptune during a great storm 'O God you will save me if you wish but I am going to go on holding my tiller straight.'
Michel de Montaigne
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
G.K. Chesterton
If the chief party whether it be the people or the army or the nobility which you think most useful and of most consequence to you for the conservation of your dignity be corrupt you must follow their humor and indulge them and in that case honesty and virtue are pernicious.
Machiavelli
Every man wherever he goes is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Bertrand Russell
Every life is a possession of faith and exercises an inevitable and silent propaganda.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it - except in the case of the very purest and they are rare.
Simone Weil
The less men think the more they talk.
Charles Montesquieu
It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men already have 'something worth fighting for' they do not feel like fighting.
Eric Hoffer
When I think over what I have said I envy dumb people.
Seneca
Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.
Alfred North Whitehead
The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.
Henry S. Haskins
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
Marquis de Condorcet
Conscience is a sacred sanctuary where God alone may enter as judge.
Felicite Robert de Lamennais
We are reformers in spring and summer in autumn and winter we stand by the old reformers in the morning conservers at night. Reform is affirmative conservatism negative conservatism goes for comfort reform for truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-conquest is the greatest of victories.
Plato
To rejoice in conquest is to rejoice in murder.
Lao-Tsze
Conscience reigns but it does not govern.
Paul Valéry
To confess a fault freely is the next thing to being innocent of it.
Syrus
A man should remove not only unnecessary acts but also unnecessary thoughts for then superfluous activity will not follow.
Marcus Aurelius
A single idea if it is right saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
Jacques Maritain
Purity of heart is to will one thing.
Søren Kierkegaard
No man will swim ashore and take his baggage with him.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
The difference in men does not lie in the size of their hands nor in the perfection of their bodies but in this one sublime ability of concentration: to throw the weight with the blow to live an eternity in an hour.
Elbert Hubbard
Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several he will fail to achieve distinction in any.
Plato
The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.
G.K. Chesterton
To do two things at once is to do neither.
Publilius Syrus
To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.
Bertrand Russell
If there is anything that can be called genius it consists chiefly in the ability to give that attention to a subject which keeps it steadily in the mind till we have surveyed it accurately on all sides.
Thomas Reid
All government - indeed every human benefit and enjoyment every virtue and every prudent act - is founded on compromise and barter.
Edmund Burke
Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is in fact a subtle detraction.
Henry David Thoreau
Nothing is pure and entire of a piece. All advantages are attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation prevails in all conditions of being and existence.
David Hume
Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame very pretty often hot and fierce but still only light and flickering. As love grows older our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals deep-burning and unquenchable.
Bruce Lee
Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Aristotle
The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.
Karl Marx
Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In communism inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.
Proudhon
The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
Dante Alighieri
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
Simone Weil
He that rides his hobby gently must always give way to him that rides his hobby hard.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whatever has a tendency to promote the civil intercourse of nations by an exchange of benefits is a subject as worthy of philosophy as of politics.
Thomas Paine
Cleverness is serviceable for everything sufficient for nothing.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
As a career the business of an orthodox preacher is about as successful as that of a celluloid dog chasing an asbestos cat through Hell.
Elbert Hubbard
Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.
Edmund Burke
If you would lift me you must be on a higher ground.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
An institution is the lengthening shadow of one man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.
George Santayana
A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full decay.
Alfred North Whitehead
The path of civilization is paved with tin cans.
Elbert Hubbard
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We think our civilization near its meridian but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The three great elements of modern civilization Gunpowder Printing and the Protestant Religion.
Thomas Carlyle
Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.
José Ortega y Gasset
I am a citizen not of Athens or Greece but of the world.
Socrates
A civilized society is one that exhibits the five qualities of truth beauty adventure art and peace.
Alfred North Whitehead
Respectability is the dickey on the bosom of civilization.
Elbert Hubbard