Theme

Order philosophy quotes

Order names cosmos, ritual, law, and the patterned stability that makes shared life possible—or oppressive.

Why this theme matters

Philosophers ask whether order is discovered in nature, imposed by rulers, or cultivated through custom. Chaos and creativity stand as its counterparts.

In the history of philosophy

Cosmological order, Confucian ritual order, and modern bureaucratic order show how the same word travels across metaphysics and politics.

Thinkers in this collection

Plato , Heraclitus , Thomas Hobbes , Alfred North Whitehead , Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , Ralph Waldo Emerson , The Great Learning , The Doctrine of the Mean

Frequently asked questions

What is order in philosophy?

It can mean natural regularity, social arrangement, or moral harmony—context decides which sense is meant.

Is order always desirable?

Not if it encodes injustice; critical philosophies ask whose order and at what cost.

Where are philosophy quotes about order?

This theme collects passages on harmony, law, measure, and structure.

  1. Justice is doing one's own work and not meddling in others'.
  2. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  3. [In the state of nature, the life of man is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
  4. The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.
  5. the best of all possible worlds
  6. During the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War.
  7. the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
  8. Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
  9. Things have roots and branches; affairs have ends and beginnings. To know what comes first and what follows is to be near the Way.
  10. Before joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure are issued, that is called the Mean; when issued and all hit due measure, that is called Harmony.
  11. There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play the man well and properly.
  12. Where there is no law, there is no freedom.
  13. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
  14. Nothing is without a reason.
  15. For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.
  16. the Love that moves the sun and the other stars
  17. If all under Heaven love one another universally, there is order; if they hate one another mutually, there is disorder.
  18. The Master said: The gentleman seeks harmony but not sameness; the petty man seeks sameness but not harmony.