Editorial selection

Best philosophy quotes

Not a ranking by popularity alone. These passages were chosen for clarity, argumentative bite, and lasting use in teaching and reflection.

  1. The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
  2. What I do not know, I do not claim to know.
  3. It is worse to do injustice than to suffer it.
  4. Justice is doing one's own work and not meddling in others'.
  5. Let us not become haters of argument — that is a great danger to the soul.
  6. Extreme freedom seems to change into nothing but extreme slavery.
  7. The human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue.
  8. Virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; we are fitted by nature to receive them, and are brought to completion by habit.
  9. Virtue is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us.
  10. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  11. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.
  12. Of all that wisdom provides for the happiness of a whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship.
  13. Of things, some are in our power, and some are not.
  14. It is not things that disturb people, but their judgments about things.
  15. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
  16. Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.
  17. There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.
  18. Leisure without study is death — a tomb for a living man.
  19. He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
  20. The universe is change; life is opinion.
  21. Begin the morning by saying to yourself: Today I shall meet the busybody, the ungrateful, the arrogant…
  22. Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.
  23. If you are distressed by anything external, it is not the thing itself that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.
  24. What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I do not know.
  25. The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
  26. Once in a lifetime, everything must be doubted.
  27. A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.
  28. Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
  29. Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding!
  30. Man is something that shall be overcome.
  31. Despair is the sickness unto death — the self's refusal to be itself.
  32. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
  33. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
  34. Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
  35. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
  36. There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.
  37. One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
  38. Virtue does not come from money, but from virtue come money and all other good things for human beings.
  39. It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will.
  40. To will oneself free is also to will others free.
  41. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
  42. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
  43. The usefulness of living is not in length of days, but in their use: one may have lived long, and yet have lived little.
  44. To know, in order to foresee, so as to be able to act.
  45. Solitude is the lot of all outstanding minds.
  46. Despair is not to will to be oneself — or else to will to be oneself.
  47. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
  48. We feel that even if all possible scientific questions are answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

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