Theme

Philosophy quotes about being

Being appears in this archive as a live philosophical concern—not a slogan. These verified English passages show how thinkers treat being as a problem of judgment, practice, or explanation.

Why this theme matters

Across 4 recurring voices here (notably Paul Tillich and Avicenna), being is framed through Africana Philosophy and Religious Existentialism. Some passages define being; others warn how it fails; still others relocate it inside habit, community, or language.

In the history of philosophy

Discussions of being travel through Islamic, Africana and European modern traditions. Compare the quotations below with their school labels rather than forcing a single definition.

Thinkers in this collection

Seneca , George Berkeley , Paul Tillich , Gabriel Marcel , Plato , Linji Yixuan , Voltaire , Nishida Kitaro

Frequently asked questions

What did philosophers say about being?

They disagreed in productive ways. In this archive, Paul Tillich, Avicenna, and related voices treat being as something to clarify, cultivate, or critique—not merely to celebrate.

Where can I find philosophy quotes about being?

This theme page gathers 14 verified English quotations tagged Being, with links to thinkers and sources.

How should I read quotes about being?

Read the sentence, then check school and source. A compact line is an entry point into an argument about being, not a substitute for the surrounding text.

  1. There are more things that frighten us than crush us, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
  2. Their being is to be perceived.
  3. The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself as accepted in spite of being unacceptable.
  4. Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being… a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me.
  5. Picture human beings as if living in an underground, cave-like dwelling.
  6. Wherever you are, make yourself master; wherever you stand is real.
  7. Men must tolerate one another.
  8. Pure experience is identical with direct experience.
  9. Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of nonbeing.
  10. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.
  11. Anything which alters consciousness in the direction of unselfishness, objectivity and realism is to be connected with virtue.
  12. Moral change and moral achievement are slow; we are not loosely and lightly attached to the world.
  13. Finite being is separated from eternal being, yet every finite being points beyond itself.
  14. There is nothing that is absolutely material. There is nothing that is absolutely non-material. And in all phenomenons in the world, the two are there together.
  15. The Necessary Existent has no cause; rather, It is the cause of all that is possible.
  16. The soul is a substance; it is not a body, nor is it impressed in a body as a form in matter in the way of bodily forms.
  17. The first of intelligibles is the grasp of existence; from it the mind proceeds to the necessary and the possible.
  18. I observe that it does exist, by the same right and in the same mode as all the philosophies of the world: in the form of a literature.
  19. The whole system is founded on the notion of vital force. Pre-existing, anterior to being, it constitutes being.
  20. The African does not stand outside reality but enters into communion with it; knowledge is participation, not only analysis.
  21. The human mind, insofar as it is a simple substance distinct from the body, can neither suffer from the body nor be confused with it, but by itself, according to its own operations, understands and wills.
  22. Sensation does not belong to the mind; living and sensing belong to the organic body.
  23. Ubuntu is the root of African philosophy. The be-ing of an African in the universe is inseparably anchored upon ubuntu. … Ubuntu then is the wellspring flowing with African ontology and epistemology.
  24. Nothingness in the sense of emptiness (śūnyatā) is not separate from being, but always in a relationship with being: being-sive-nothingness, nothingness-sive-being.
  25. Philosophy, when it is really philosophy and not sophistry or ideology, does not ponder philosophy. … Philosophy ponders the nonphilosophical; the reality.
  26. The Great Void has no physical form; it is the original substance of qi. Its gathering and dispersing are but the passing forms of change.
  27. A mystery is a problem which encroaches upon its own data, invading them, as it were, and thereby transcending itself as a mere problem.