Curated selection
Famous philosophy quotes
A compact gallery of widely recognized passages. Each line links to a full archive entry with source context and related reading.
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The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.
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What I do not know, I do not claim to know.
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It is worse to do injustice than to suffer it.
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No one errs willingly.
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Justice is doing one's own work and not meddling in others'.
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Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.
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Let us not become haters of argument — that is a great danger to the soul.
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Extreme freedom seems to change into nothing but extreme slavery.
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It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
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The human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue.
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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.
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Virtue is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean relative to us.
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Man is by nature a political animal.
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A friend is another self.
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Of things, some are in our power, and some are not.
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It is not things that disturb people, but their judgments about things.
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With whatever delights you, remind yourself of its nature — then if it is lost, you will not be disturbed.
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Remember that you are an actor in a play, of such a kind as the playwright may choose.
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The beginning of philosophy is a consciousness of one's own weakness and inability concerning necessary things.
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It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
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Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.
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There are more things that frighten us than crush us, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
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All else belongs to others; time alone is ours.
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If you wish to be loved, love.
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There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.
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Claim yourself for yourself.
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Leisure without study is death — a tomb for a living man.
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He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.
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A multitude of books distracts; since you cannot read all you have, it is enough to have as much as you can read.
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Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the soul is dyed by its impressions.
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The universe is change; life is opinion.
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Begin the morning by saying to yourself: Today I shall meet the busybody, the ungrateful, the arrogant…
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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.
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If you are distressed by anything external, it is not the thing itself that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.
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I think, therefore I am.
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Once in a lifetime, everything must be doubted.
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The things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true.
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Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
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Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
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Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own understanding!
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Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.
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From the military school of life. — What does not kill me makes me stronger.
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Amor fati: let that be my love from now on!
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How one becomes what one is.
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Man is something that shall be overcome.
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This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more…
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The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions…be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
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To abandon the struggle for private happiness…to burn with passion for eternal things — this is emancipation.