Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Philosophers

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

One who believes in himself has no need to convince others.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

The important thing about a problem is not its solution, but the strength we gain in finding the solution

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Smile, smile, smile at your mind as often as possible. Your smiling will considerably reduce your mind's tearing tension.

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Out of difficulties grow miracles.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

I can, therefore I am.

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

All will happen as you want it, provided you really want it.

Let come what comes, let go what goes. See what remains.

The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.

It was wrong to capture wild animals and confine them in captivity for people to go and gawk at them. And that's basically how zoos got started. But once you do that, and once you have animals that have been bred in captivity, you're really stuck with them in some sense. You can't return them to the wild.

The more one has suffered, the less one demands. To protest is a sign one has traversed no hell.

The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons with God himself at the very heart of this community as its prime Sustainer and most glorious Inhabitant.

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.

Life is life - whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.

I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

A healthy social life is found only when, in the mirror of each soul, the whole community finds its reflection, and when, in the whole community, the virtue of each one is living.

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower and draws all good things towards you.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed.

Too often, people think that solving the world's problems is based on conquering the earth, rather than touching the earth, touching ground.

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.

Whether it is a garden gnome, the sound of Bing Crosby launching into 'White Christmas', the blinking innocent eyes of Bambi or the words of Patience Strong, the kitsch phenomenon is there as strong and recognisable as your mother's face. You seldom if ever have the question, whether this is kitsch or not. If you think it might be, then it is.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.

People's identities as Indians, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way - quite suddenly - to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities.