Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter.
Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm.
If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.
I did not know I loved you until I heard myself telling so, for one instance I thought, "Good God, what have I said?" and then I knew it was true.
A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.
The newspapers at one time said that I was dead but after carefully examining the evidence I came to the conclusion that this statement was false.
Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery.
One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.
Of neighborhoods, benevolence is the most beautiful. How can the man be considered wise who when he had the choice does not settle in benevolence.
It's no accident that most of the great black spokespersons and leaders understood the centrality of self-affirmation, self-respect and self-love.
Courage is the enabling virtue for any philosopher - for any human being, I think, in the end. Courage to think, courage to love, courage to hope.
The people to whom we minister and speak will not recall 99 percent of what we say to them, but they will never forget the kind of persons we are.
Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species - us.
Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.
The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue.
When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence.
One great difference between a wise man and a fool is, the former only wishes for what he may possibly obtain; the latter desires impossibilities.
When Alexander the Great addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, Diogenes replied "Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine."
Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.
Judgment is affirmation with the intention to thereby affirm competently enough, and indeed aptly. That distinguishes judgments from mere guesses.
Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming!" That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world.
Freedom is the fundamental character of the will, as weight is of matter... That which is free is the will. Will without freedom is an empty word.
The proofs of the existence of God are to such an extent fallen into discredit that they pass for something antiquated, belonging to days gone by.
Individual experiences being limited and individual spontaneity feeble, we are strengthened and enriched by assimilating the experience of others.
It is in rare and scattered instants that beauty smiles even on her adorers, who are reduced for habitual comfort to remembering her past favours.
The irrational in the human has something about it altogether repulsive and terrible, as we see in the maniac, the miser, the drunkard or the ape.
Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject.
Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.
If you find it complicated to answer someone’s question, do not answer it, for his container is already full and does not have room for the answer
Allah will support the just state even if it is led by unbelievers, but Allah will not support the oppressive state even if it is led by believers
Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done.
Each time this identity announces itself, someone or something cries: Look out for the trap, youre caught. Take off, get free, disengage yourself.
I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner.
The will of the world is always a will to death, a will to suicide. We must not accept this suicide, and we must so act that it cannot take place.
The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man's innermost being and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.
It is with government as with medicine, its only business is the choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty.
Those physical difficulties which you cannot account for, be very slow to arraign; for he that would be wiser than Nature would be wiser than God.
Man is a central creature between the animals, that is to say, the most perfect form, which unites the traits of all in the most complete epitome.
Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality.
When "reality" is sought for at large, it is without intellectual import; at most the term carries the connotation of an agreeableemotional state.
Some eyes want spectacles to see things clearly and distinctly: but let not those that use them therefore say nobody can see clearly without them.
We must choose for others as we have reason to believe they would choose for themselves if they were at the age of reason and deciding rationally.
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.
Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind; and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind.
The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.
In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will.
All of us, as bodies, are in the active position of figuring out how to live with and against the constructions - or norms - that help to form us.
Reaching and understanding is the process of bringing about an agreement on the presupposed basis of validity claims that are mutually recognized.