A Collection of Philosophical Quotes

The curse which lies upon marriage is that too often the individuals are joined in their weakness rather than in their strength-each asking from the other instead of finding pleasure in giving. It is even more deceptive to dream of gaining through the child a plenitude, a warmth, a value, which one is unable to create for oneself; the child brings joy only to the woman who is capable of disinterestedly desiring the happiness of another, to one who without being wrapped up in self seeks to transcend her own existence.

Albert Camus

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules.

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow; don't walk behind me, I may not lead; walk beside me, and just be my friend.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Auguste Comte

Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.

Rene Descartes

Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Will Durant

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt- particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms.

Albert Einstein

A mind once stretched by new thoughts can never regain its original shape.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment.

I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.

Victor Frankl

What matters above all is the attitude we take toward suffering, the attitude in which we take our suffering upon ourselves.

I deem it to be a remarkable fact that man, as long as he regarded himself as a creature, interpreted his existence in the image of God, his creator; but as soon as he started considering himself as a creator, began to interpret his existence merely in the image of his own creation, the machine.

There is no need to feel ashamed of existential despair because of the assumption that it is an emotional disease, for it is not a neurotic symptom but a human achievement and accomplishment. Above all, it is a manifestation of intellectual sincerity and honesty.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on how one looks at it.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man almost nothing.

Vaclav Havel

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning -in other words, of absurdity- the more energetically meaning is sought.

Ernest Hemingway

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

David Hume

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.

Immanuel Kant

There is...only a single categorical imperative and it is this: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Soren Kierkegaard

Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self or it is that (which accounts for it) that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but (consists in the fact) that the relation relates itself to its own self.

I must find a truth that is true for me.

What the philosophers say about Reality is often as disappointing as a sign you see in a shop window which reads: Pressing Done Here. If you brought your clothes to be pressed, you would be fooled; for only the sign is for sale.

Karl Marx

Religion is the opiate of the masses.

Be careful to trust a person, who does not like wine.

Abraham Maslow

When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.

We do what we are and we are what we do.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The world is beautiful, but has a disease called Man.

Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence... and loathing seizes him.

Blaise Pascal

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

How is it that a lame man does not annoy us while a lame mind does? Because a lame man recognizes that we are walking straight, while a lame mind says that it is we who are limping.

Plato

Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.

He was a wise man who invented God.

Bertrand Russell

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Philosophy... removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt.

One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.

The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Consciousness is a being such that in its being, this being is in question insofar as this being implies a being other than itself.

Consciousness is a being, the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.

Man is condemned to be free.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....

Socrates

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Miguel de Unamuno

That which the Fascists hate above all else, is intelligence.

Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion.

Francois Voltaire

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Oscar Wilde

Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.

I can resist everything except temptation.

One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers.

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

Only the shallow know themselves.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

The artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Whereof one cannot speak, thereon one must remain silent.

The limits of my language are the limits of my mind.

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