THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION OF
WORDS THAT
CHANGED THE WORLD
Classic Philosopher Quotes
From Ancient Greece to the 20th Century
30 Philosophers • 300+ Quotes • 2,500 Years of Wisdom
This collection gathers the most enduring, powerful, and thought-provoking quotes from the greatest philosophical minds in recorded history. From the ancient agora of Athens to the lecture halls of 20th-century Europe, these thinkers reshaped how humanity understands itself, its world, and its place in the cosmos.
Socrates 470–399 BC
■ Ancient Greece
1. “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
2. “I know that I know nothing.”
3. “To find yourself, think for yourself.”
4. “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
5. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
6. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
7. “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
8. “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
9. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
10. “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.”
Plato 428–348 BC
■ Ancient Greece
1. “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”
2. “At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.”
3. “We are twice armed if we fight with faith.”
4. “Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
5. “The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
6. “Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.”
7. “Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.”
8. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
9. “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”
10. “The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”
11. “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
12. “Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.”
Aristotle 384–322 BC
■ Ancient Greece
1. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
2. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
3. “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
4. “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
5. “Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”
6. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
7. “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
8. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”
9. “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
10. “Hope is a waking dream.”
11. “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”
12. “To perceive is to suffer.”
13. “A friend to all is a friend to none.”
14. “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”
Confucius 551–479 BC
■ Ancient China
1. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
2. “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
3. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
4. “He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”
5. “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
6. “The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”
7. “When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it — this is knowledge.”
8. “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”
9. “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
10. “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”
11. “To see what is right and not do it is the want of courage.”
12. “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”
Lao Tzu 6th century BC
■ Ancient China
1. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
2. “The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”
3. “Knowing others is wisdom; knowing yourself is enlightenment.”
4. “To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
5. “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
6. “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
7. “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them.”
8. “He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.”
9. “Silence is a source of great strength.”
10. “When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
11. “Great acts are made up of small deeds.”
Marcus Aurelius 121–180 AD
■ Roman Stoicism
1. “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
2. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
3. “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
4. “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
5. “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.”
6. “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
7. “Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature’s delight.”
8. “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together.”
9. “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
10. “He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.”
11. “Do not indulge in dreams of what you have not, but count the blessings actually yours.”
12. “Begin each day by telling yourself: today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness.”
Epictetus 50–135 AD
■ Roman Stoicism
1. “Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”
2. “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”
3. “No man is free who is not master of himself.”
4. “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
5. “Seek not the good in external things; seek it in yourself.”
6. “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”
7. “First say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do.”
8. “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”
9. “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”
10. “We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.”
Seneca 4 BC–65 AD
■ Roman Stoicism
1. “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
2. “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
3. “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
4. “Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
5. “If you wished to be loved, love.”
6. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
7. “While we wait for life, life passes.”
8. “Per aspera ad astra — Through hardships to the stars.”
9. “True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.”
René Descartes 1596–1650
■ Early Modern Philosophy
1. “I think, therefore I am.”
2. “The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”
3. “Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”
4. “It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”
5. “Conquer yourself rather than the world.”
6. “Doubt is the origin of wisdom.”
7. “Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.”
8. “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
9. “The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.”
10. “Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”
Baruch Spinoza 1632–1677
■ Early Modern Philosophy
1. “Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”
2. “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
3. “Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.”
4. “Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”
5. “I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”
6. “Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.”
7. “Will and Intellect are one and the same thing.”
8. “There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
John Locke 1632–1704
■ Enlightenment
1. “Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
2. “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”
3. “New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”
4. “The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
5. “All wealth is the product of labor.”
6. “What worries you, masters you.”
7. “We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character from those around us.”
8. “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
■ Rationalism
1. “Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.”
2. “To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.”
3. “Nothing is without reason.”
4. “There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact.”
5. “The present is big with the future.”
6. “The more a man knows, the less he talks.”
Voltaire 1694–1778
■ Enlightenment
1. “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
2. “Common sense is not so common.”
3. “Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.”
4. “The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
5. “Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
6. “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
7. “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
8. “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
9. “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
David Hume 1711–1776
■ Enlightenment
1. “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
2. “The beauty of things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”
3. “It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.”
4. “Reason is the slave of the passions.”
5. “Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
6. “No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.”
7. “Custom is the great guide of human life.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
■ Enlightenment
1. “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
2. “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”
3. “Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education.”
4. “Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.”
5. “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
6. “Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.”
7. “What wisdom can you find greater than kindness?”
Immanuel Kant 1724–1804
■ Enlightenment
1. “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
2. “Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
3. “Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.”
4. “We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
5. “Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding.”
6. “Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
7. “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
8. “Treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as means.”
9. “Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770–1831
■ German Idealism
1. “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”
2. “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”
3. “To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.”
4. “What experience and history teach is this — that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history.”
5. “The truth is the whole.”
6. “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
7. “Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.”
8. “The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophical study.”
Arthur Schopenhauer 1788–1860
■ 19th Century Philosophy
1. “Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
2. “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
3. “The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.”
4. “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
5. “Compassion is the basis of morality.”
6. “We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack.”
7. “Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.”
8. “Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become.”
9. “The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.”
John Stuart Mill 1806–1873
■ 19th Century Philosophy
1. “One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.”
2. “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.”
3. “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
4. “It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
5. “Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.”
6. “Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.”
Søren Kierkegaard 1813–1855
■ Existentialism
1. “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
2. “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
3. “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
4. “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”
5. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
6. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
7. “Once you label me, you negate me.”
Karl Marx 1818–1883
■ 19th Century Philosophy
1. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
2. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
3. “Religion is the opium of the people.”
4. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
5. “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.”
6. “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.”
7. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but their social being that determines their consciousness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844–1900
■ 19th Century Philosophy
1. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
2. “Without music, life would be a mistake.”
3. “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
4. “The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
5. “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
6. “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
7. “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
8. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
9. “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.”
10. “Become who you are.”
11. “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
12. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
William James 1842–1910
■ American Pragmatism
1. “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
2. “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
3. “Wisdom is learning what to overlook.”
4. “Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”
5. “The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.”
6. “If you can change your mind, you can change your life.”
7. “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”
8. “Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.”
Bertrand Russell 1872–1970
■ Analytic Philosophy
1. “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
2. “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
3. “War does not determine who is right — only who is left.”
4. “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
5. “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
6. “To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
7. “Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth.”
8. “Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”
9. “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
■ Analytic Philosophy
1. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
2. “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
3. “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.”
4. “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
5. “The world is all that is the case.”
6. “If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”
7. “The human body is the best picture of the human soul.”
8. “Tell me how you seek and I will tell you what you are seeking.”
Martin Heidegger 1889–1976
■ Phenomenology / Existentialism
1. “Tell me how you read and I’ll tell you who you are.”
2. “Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”
3. “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”
4. “Why are there beings at all, instead of nothing?”
5. “The possible ranks higher than the actual.”
6. “Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn.”
7. “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology.”
Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
■ Existentialism
1. “Existence precedes essence.”
2. “Hell is other people.”
3. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
4. “Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
5. “Words are loaded pistols.”
6. “We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are.”
7. “You are nothing else but what you make of yourself.”
Hannah Arendt 1906–1975
■ Political Philosophy
1. “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
2. “The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.”
3. “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be either good or evil.”
4. “Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert.”
5. “Evil comes from a failure to think.”
6. “Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.”
Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986
■ Existentialism / Feminism
1. “One is not born a woman, but becomes one.”
2. “I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely.”
3. “To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.”
4. “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
5. “Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.”
6. “It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal.”
Albert Camus 1913–1960
■ Absurdism
1. “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
2. “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.”
3. “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
4. “Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
5. “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
6. “I rebel; therefore we exist.”
7. “Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Walk beside me; just be my friend.”
8. “In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.”
9. “Live to the point of tears.”
10. “Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.”
“Philosophy begins with wonder — and these words remind us why.”
Classic Philosopher Quotes
From Ancient Greece to the 20th Century
30 Philosophers • 300+ Quotes • 2,500 Years of Wisdom
This collection gathers the most enduring, powerful, and thought-provoking quotes from the greatest philosophical minds in recorded history. From the ancient agora of Athens to the lecture halls of 20th-century Europe, these thinkers reshaped how humanity understands itself, its world, and its place in the cosmos.
Socrates 470–399 BC
■ Ancient Greece
1. “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
2. “I know that I know nothing.”
3. “To find yourself, think for yourself.”
4. “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
5. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
6. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
7. “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
8. “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
9. “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
10. “One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.”
Plato 428–348 BC
■ Ancient Greece
1. “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”
2. “At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.”
3. “We are twice armed if we fight with faith.”
4. “Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
5. “The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
6. “Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil.”
7. “Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.”
8. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
9. “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”
10. “The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”
11. “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
12. “Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.”
Aristotle 384–322 BC
■ Ancient Greece
1. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
2. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
3. “It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
4. “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
5. “Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”
6. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
7. “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
8. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”
9. “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
10. “Hope is a waking dream.”
11. “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”
12. “To perceive is to suffer.”
13. “A friend to all is a friend to none.”
14. “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”
Confucius 551–479 BC
■ Ancient China
1. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
2. “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
3. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
4. “He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”
5. “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
6. “The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”
7. “When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it — this is knowledge.”
8. “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”
9. “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
10. “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”
11. “To see what is right and not do it is the want of courage.”
12. “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”
Lao Tzu 6th century BC
■ Ancient China
1. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
2. “The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”
3. “Knowing others is wisdom; knowing yourself is enlightenment.”
4. “To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
5. “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
6. “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
7. “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them.”
8. “He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.”
9. “Silence is a source of great strength.”
10. “When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
11. “Great acts are made up of small deeds.”
Marcus Aurelius 121–180 AD
■ Roman Stoicism
1. “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
2. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
3. “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
4. “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
5. “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.”
6. “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
7. “Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature’s delight.”
8. “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together.”
9. “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
10. “He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.”
11. “Do not indulge in dreams of what you have not, but count the blessings actually yours.”
12. “Begin each day by telling yourself: today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness.”
Epictetus 50–135 AD
■ Roman Stoicism
1. “Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”
2. “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”
3. “No man is free who is not master of himself.”
4. “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
5. “Seek not the good in external things; seek it in yourself.”
6. “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”
7. “First say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do.”
8. “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”
9. “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”
10. “We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.”
Seneca 4 BC–65 AD
■ Roman Stoicism
1. “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
2. “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
3. “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.”
4. “Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
5. “If you wished to be loved, love.”
6. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
7. “While we wait for life, life passes.”
8. “Per aspera ad astra — Through hardships to the stars.”
9. “True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.”
René Descartes 1596–1650
■ Early Modern Philosophy
1. “I think, therefore I am.”
2. “The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”
3. “Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.”
4. “It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”
5. “Conquer yourself rather than the world.”
6. “Doubt is the origin of wisdom.”
7. “Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.”
8. “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
9. “The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.”
10. “Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.”
Baruch Spinoza 1632–1677
■ Early Modern Philosophy
1. “Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”
2. “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
3. “Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.”
4. “Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”
5. “I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”
6. “Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.”
7. “Will and Intellect are one and the same thing.”
8. “There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
John Locke 1632–1704
■ Enlightenment
1. “Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
2. “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”
3. “New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”
4. “The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
5. “All wealth is the product of labor.”
6. “What worries you, masters you.”
7. “We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character from those around us.”
8. “Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
■ Rationalism
1. “Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.”
2. “To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.”
3. “Nothing is without reason.”
4. “There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact.”
5. “The present is big with the future.”
6. “The more a man knows, the less he talks.”
Voltaire 1694–1778
■ Enlightenment
1. “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
2. “Common sense is not so common.”
3. “Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.”
4. “The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
5. “Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.”
6. “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
7. “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
8. “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
9. “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
David Hume 1711–1776
■ Enlightenment
1. “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”
2. “The beauty of things exists in the mind which contemplates them.”
3. “It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.”
4. “Reason is the slave of the passions.”
5. “Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
6. “No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.”
7. “Custom is the great guide of human life.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
■ Enlightenment
1. “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
2. “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”
3. “Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education.”
4. “Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.”
5. “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
6. “Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.”
7. “What wisdom can you find greater than kindness?”
Immanuel Kant 1724–1804
■ Enlightenment
1. “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
2. “Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”
3. “Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.”
4. “We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.”
5. “Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding.”
6. “Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.”
7. “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
8. “Treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as means.”
9. “Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1770–1831
■ German Idealism
1. “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”
2. “Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”
3. “To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.”
4. “What experience and history teach is this — that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history.”
5. “The truth is the whole.”
6. “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
7. “Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.”
8. “The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophical study.”
Arthur Schopenhauer 1788–1860
■ 19th Century Philosophy
1. “Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
2. “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
3. “The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.”
4. “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
5. “Compassion is the basis of morality.”
6. “We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack.”
7. “Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.”
8. “Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become.”
9. “The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.”
John Stuart Mill 1806–1873
■ 19th Century Philosophy
1. “One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.”
2. “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.”
3. “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
4. “It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
5. “Whatever crushes individuality is despotism.”
6. “Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.”
Søren Kierkegaard 1813–1855
■ Existentialism
1. “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
2. “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
3. “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
4. “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”
5. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
6. “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
7. “Once you label me, you negate me.”
Karl Marx 1818–1883
■ 19th Century Philosophy
1. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
2. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
3. “Religion is the opium of the people.”
4. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
5. “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.”
6. “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.”
7. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but their social being that determines their consciousness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844–1900
■ 19th Century Philosophy
1. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
2. “Without music, life would be a mistake.”
3. “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
4. “The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
5. “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
6. “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
7. “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
8. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
9. “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.”
10. “Become who you are.”
11. “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
12. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
William James 1842–1910
■ American Pragmatism
1. “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
2. “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
3. “Wisdom is learning what to overlook.”
4. “Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”
5. “The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.”
6. “If you can change your mind, you can change your life.”
7. “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”
8. “Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.”
Bertrand Russell 1872–1970
■ Analytic Philosophy
1. “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
2. “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
3. “War does not determine who is right — only who is left.”
4. “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
5. “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
6. “To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
7. “Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth.”
8. “Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”
9. “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
■ Analytic Philosophy
1. “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
2. “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
3. “If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.”
4. “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
5. “The world is all that is the case.”
6. “If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”
7. “The human body is the best picture of the human soul.”
8. “Tell me how you seek and I will tell you what you are seeking.”
Martin Heidegger 1889–1976
■ Phenomenology / Existentialism
1. “Tell me how you read and I’ll tell you who you are.”
2. “Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”
3. “Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”
4. “Why are there beings at all, instead of nothing?”
5. “The possible ranks higher than the actual.”
6. “Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn.”
7. “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology.”
Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
■ Existentialism
1. “Existence precedes essence.”
2. “Hell is other people.”
3. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
4. “Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
5. “Words are loaded pistols.”
6. “We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are.”
7. “You are nothing else but what you make of yourself.”
Hannah Arendt 1906–1975
■ Political Philosophy
1. “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
2. “The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.”
3. “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be either good or evil.”
4. “Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert.”
5. “Evil comes from a failure to think.”
6. “Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.”
Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986
■ Existentialism / Feminism
1. “One is not born a woman, but becomes one.”
2. “I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely.”
3. “To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.”
4. “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
5. “Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.”
6. “It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal.”
Albert Camus 1913–1960
■ Absurdism
1. “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
2. “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.”
3. “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
4. “Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
5. “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
6. “I rebel; therefore we exist.”
7. “Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Walk beside me; just be my friend.”
8. “In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.”
9. “Live to the point of tears.”
10. “Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.”
“Philosophy begins with wonder — and these words remind us why.”
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