Quotes by Philosophers - Page 55

So I should say that civilizations begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean.
Will Durant
Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining but they make them artificial.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The circumstances of others seem good to us while ours seem good to others.
Syrus
The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.
George Santayana
Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.
Søren Kierkegaard
Organized religion is making Christianity political rather than making politics Christian.
Laurens van der Post
I desire no other evidence of the truth to Christianity than the Lord's Prayer.
Mme. De Stael
If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage the life and death of Jesus were those of a God.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Of all animals the boy is the most unmanageable.
Plato
Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardour for their curiosity their intolerance of shams the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.
Aldous Huxley
Gaiety alone as it were is the hard cash of happiness everything else is just a promissory note.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The clearest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.
Michel de Montaigne
Cheerfulness is as natural to the heart of man in strong health as color to his cheek and wherever there is habitual gloom there must be either bad air unwholesome food improperly severe labor or erring habits of life.
John Ruskin
Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take away with us.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
Albert Camus
To enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on excellence of character.
Aristotle
Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself anything goes.
Ayn Rand
Character is perfectly educated will.
Novalis
Character is that which can do without success.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seeded refusal of that which others have made of us.
Jean-Paul Sartre
It is thus with most of us we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
Eric Hoffer
Good breeding a union of kindness and independence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Things do not change we change.
Henry David Thoreau
There is change in all things. You yourself are subject to continual change and some decay and this is common to the entire universe.
Marcus Aurelius
For many men the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles it only changes them.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
Why do we shrink from change? What can come into being save by change?
Marcus Aurelius
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.
Francis Bacon
In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.
George Santayana
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead
Where the old tracks are lost new country is revealed with its wonders.
Rabindranath Tagore
It is in changing that things find purpose.
Heraclitus
Continuity in everything is unpleasant.
Blaise Pascal
To exist is to change to change is to mature to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
Henri Bergson
A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.
Herbert Spencer
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.
John Dewey
Things alter for the worse spontaneously if they be not altered for the better designedly.
Francis Bacon
Everything flows nothing stays still.
Heraclitus
Nothing is permanent but change.
Heraclitus
Life is always at some turning point.
Irwin Edman
We change whether we like it or not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
With luck on your side you can do without brains.
Giordano Bruno
There is nothing permanent except change.
Heraclitus
You can't step into the same river twice.
Heraclitus
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party but they say nothing and if we do not use the gifts they bring they carry them as silently away.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you do not expect it you will not find the unexpected for it is hard to find and difficult.
Heraclitus
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion and if we were sure stifling it would be an evil still.
John Stuart Mill
If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.
Voltaire
Every burned book enlightens the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To limit the press is to insult a nation to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.
Claude Adrien Helvétius
Everything in nature is a cause from which there flows some effect.
Spinoza
It is a good thing to learn caution by the misfortunes of others.
Syrus
There is one basic cause of all effects.
Giordano Bruno
Benefits should be granted little by little so that they may be better enjoyed.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Providence has given us hope and sleep as a compensation for the many cares of life.
Voltaire
By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
Adam Smith
I think that there is nothing not even crime more opposed to poetry to philosophy ay to life itself than this incessant business.
Henry David Thoreau
People of the same trade seldom meet together even for merriment and diversion but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Adam Smith
What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter.
Henry David Thoreau
A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
Paul Valéry