Philosophy philosophy quotes

It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.

A person's character is their destiny.

What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.

Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.

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.

Of things, some are in our power, and some are not.

With whatever delights you, remind yourself of its nature — then if it is lost, you will not be disturbed.

Remember that you are an actor in a play, of such a kind as the playwright may choose.

The beginning of philosophy is a consciousness of one's own weakness and inability concerning necessary things.

Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.

There are more things that frighten us than crush us, and we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.

Leisure without study is death — a tomb for a living man.

A multitude of books distracts; since you cannot read all you have, it is enough to have as much as you can read.

Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the soul is dyed by its impressions.

The universe is change; life is opinion.

Begin the morning by saying to yourself: Today I shall meet the busybody, the ungrateful, the arrogant…

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.

If you are distressed by anything external, it is not the thing itself that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it.

Nothing can be created from nothing by divine agency.

Therefore death is nothing to us, and does not concern us at all.

You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Give what you command, and command what you will.

To philosophize is to learn how to die.

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs kindling.

The things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true.

The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed.

We must cultivate our garden.

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe…: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

From the military school of life. — What does not kill me makes me stronger.

How one becomes what one is.

Man is something that shall be overcome.

Despair is the sickness unto death — the self's refusal to be itself.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs.

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical…He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.

I rebel — therefore we exist.

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Those who have a 'why' to live can bear with almost any 'how'.

Men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.

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.

To abandon the struggle for private happiness…to burn with passion for eternal things — this is emancipation.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.

Any man can err; only a fool persists in error.

Do not seek for things to happen as you wish, but wish for things to happen as they do, and you will flow well.

Virtue does not come from money, but from virtue come money and all other good things for human beings.

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.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Depart then in peace; the one who releases you is also at peace.

The usefulness of living is not in length of days, but in their use: one may have lived long, and yet have lived little.

To know, in order to foresee, so as to be able to act.

Reading means thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.

Solitude is the lot of all outstanding minds.

Marry, and you will regret it; do not marry, and you will also regret it.

Despair is not to will to be oneself — or else to will to be oneself.

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events.

The essential achievement of the will is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind.

Next to worry, probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.

Envy is itself a terrible obstacle to happiness.

The meaning of a word is its use in the language.

Man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.

Rebellion cannot do without the notion of a limit — it stops at human dignity.

In the bitterest turns of fortune, true friends are proved.

The Master said: What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

The Master said: You, shall I teach you what knowing is? To know what you know, and to know what you do not know — that is true knowing.

Zengzi said: Each day I examine myself on three counts: In acting on behalf of others, have I been loyal? In dealings with friends, have I been trustworthy? Have I practiced what was passed on to me?

The Master said: When you see the worthy, think of equaling them; when you see the unworthy, examine yourself within.

The Master said: When you have faults, do not fear to correct them.

The Master said: Only when the year turns cold do we know that the pine and cypress are the last to wither.

The Master said: Those who know it are not equal to those who love it; those who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

From this we know that we survive through adversity, and perish in ease and pleasure.

Thus, when Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility on someone, it first afflicts his mind and will, exhausts his muscles and bones, starves his body, subjects him to poverty, and confounds his undertakings — so as to stir his mind, harden his nature, and increase his capacities.

Mencius said: In obscurity, cultivate yourself alone; when successful, bring goodness to all under Heaven.

Mencius said: Those who love others are constantly loved by others; those who respect others are constantly respected by others.

Those who have the Way receive much help; those who lose the Way receive little help.

Indigo is taken from the indigo plant, yet is bluer than the plant; ice is made of water, yet is colder than water.

Without accumulating small steps, one cannot reach a thousand li; without accumulating small streams, one cannot form rivers and seas.

The way of great learning lies in illuminating luminous virtue, in renewing the people, and in resting in the highest good.

From the Son of Heaven down to the common people, all alike take the cultivation of the person as the root.

Earth's condition is receptive devotion; the gentleman accordingly thickens his virtue to bear things.

The highest good is like water. Water benefits the myriad things and does not contend; it dwells in places the multitude dislike — therefore it is close to the Way.

A tree that fills the arms' embrace grows from a tiny shoot; a nine-story tower rises from a heap of earth; a journey of a thousand li begins beneath one's feet.

Difficult affairs under Heaven must arise from the easy; great affairs under Heaven must arise from the small.

Humans model themselves on earth; earth on heaven; heaven on the Way; and the Way on what is naturally so.

Know contentment, and you will not be disgraced; know when to stop, and you will not be imperiled — thus you can endure.

Therefore it is said: The consummate person has no self; the spiritual person has no merit; the sage has no name.

My life has a limit, but knowledge has none. To pursue the limitless with the limited is perilous!

Care for one another impartially, and benefit one another mutually.

To establish the mind for Heaven and Earth; to secure the destiny of the people; to continue the interrupted learning of the past sages; to open peace for all ages.

I ask the channel how it can be so clear — because fresh water keeps flowing from its source.

Those who in ancient or modern times achieved great enterprises and profound learning must pass through three realms: first, standing alone atop a high tower after the west wind withers the green trees, gazing to the end of the road at heaven's edge; second, the belt growing looser without regret, wasting away for the beloved; third, searching a thousand times in the crowd, then suddenly turning — and finding that person standing where the lanterns grow sparse.

The two sayings I have found most useful in life are these: responsibility, and delight.… What I speak of today as respect for one's work is responsibility; delight in one's work is interest. I deeply believe that a reasonable human life should be like this.

Every occupation has its interest — if only you keep at it, interest will naturally arise.

Boldly hypothesize; carefully verify.

Study problems, import theories, reorganize the national heritage, and recreate civilization.

Human life is life with awareness and understanding — or with a higher degree of such awareness. This is what distinguishes humans from beasts, and human life from the life of other animals.

Of all things the measure is man.

Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Their being is to be perceived.

the best of all possible worlds

The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.

It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.

The true is precisely what is made.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

All real living is meeting.

I am myself and my circumstance; and if I do not save it, I do not save myself.

Man is always more than he knows of himself.

Teach your tongue to say, “I do not know.”

Mind precedes all mental states; mind is their chief; they are mind-made.

You have a right to action alone, never to its fruits.

Bodhi originally has no tree; the bright mirror is not a stand. Fundamentally there is not a single thing — where could dust alight?

Give rise to a mind that abides nowhere.

When the age changes, affairs change; when affairs change, preparations must change.

When the granaries are full, people know ritual and restraint; when food and clothing are sufficient, they know honor and shame.

All under heaven is nothing but concrete things (qi). The Way is the Way of things; one cannot reverse this and call things merely vessels of an abstract Way.

Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.

Accept the truth from whatever source it comes.

Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being… a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me.

This very practice of philosophers is a release and separation of soul from body.

Pleasant it is, when winds trouble the great sea, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation.

From the very fountain of delights rises something bitter that chokes among the flowers themselves.

Take up and read; take up and read.

Do not go outside; return into yourself. Truth dwells in the inner man.

Two loves have made two cities.

I do not portray being. I portray passing.

Each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own custom.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

The true end of the state is in reality freedom.

All our dignity consists, then, in thought.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

During the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War.

Felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other.

Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.

To find a form of association…by which each, uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself, and remains as free as before.

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, thought of saying 'This is mine'…was the true founder of civil society.

The sublime is what is absolutely great.

The true is the whole.

Self-consciousness attains its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness.

What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Simplify, simplify.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.

Consciousness…does not appear to itself chopped up in bits…It is nothing jointed; it flows.

The quest for certainty…has always been a quest for a peace that is assured.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.

The many become one, and are increased by one.

In the Garden of Eden Adam saw the animals before he named them: in the traditional system, children named the animals before they saw them.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Man is a useless passion.

Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

It is easy to obtain confirmations…for nearly every theory—if we look for confirmations.

The heart of compassion is possessed by all; so too the hearts of shame, of respect, and of right and wrong.

All things are already complete in me. There is no greater delight than to turn within and find sincerity.

I am good at nourishing my flood-like qi.

The trouble with people is that they are blinkered by one corner and obscure the greater pattern.

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly…He did not know whether Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly was dreaming it was Zhou.

Relying on the heavenly pattern, I strike into the large gaps, guide through the large openings, and follow what is inherently so.

Better to forget one another in the rivers and lakes than to moisten one another with foam when stranded.

Things have roots and branches; affairs have ends and beginnings. To know what comes first and what follows is to be near the Way.

The noble person is cautious about what is not seen, apprehensive about what is not heard…therefore watchful when alone.

The people are my siblings; things are my companions.

The clearer the knowing, the more earnest the practice; the more earnest the practice, the clearer the knowing.

To extend knowledge lies in investigating things: if one wishes to extend one's knowledge, one must approach things and exhaust their principle.

Mind is principle. Are there affairs or principles outside the mind?

That little bit of innate knowing of yours is your own criterion.

Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is an eternal law.

To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good, and to cleanse one's mind—this is the teaching of the Buddhas.

One is one's own refuge; who else could be the refuge?

Contacts with the senses give cold and heat, pleasure and pain; they come and go and are impermanent—endure them.

One should lift oneself by the Self and not degrade oneself; for the Self alone is friend and enemy of the self.

Wherever you are, make yourself master; wherever you stand is real.

Does a dog have Buddha-nature? … Wu (No).

Every day is a good day.

Pure experience is the state of experience just as it is, without the slightest addition of deliberative discrimination.

To experience means to know facts just as they are.

The good is the realization of personality.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

Philosophy is the cultivation of the soul.

Men must tolerate one another.

All life is suffering.

Habit and nature come to completion together and transform with each other.

The Master said: The craftsman who wishes to do his work well must first sharpen his tools.

This feeling—wonder—belongs especially to the philosopher; philosophy has no other beginning than this.

Unless…either philosophers rule in the cities or those now called kings…philosophize genuinely and adequately…

Every human soul has by nature beheld the things that are.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good.

Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world.

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.

Conscience! Conscience! divine instinct, immortal and heavenly voice.

The true is thus the Bacchanalian revel in which no member is not drunk.

What a person is contributes more to his happiness than what he has.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

The quest for certainty…is a quest for a peace which is assured.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

Forgiveness is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly.

the banality of evil

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.

Absolute attention is prayer.

Whoever strives with all his might, him can we save.

Live with your century, but do not be its creature.

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

That whereby humans differ from birds and beasts is slight; ordinary people discard it, the noble person preserves it.

Wealth and honor cannot corrupt him, poverty and lowliness cannot move him, might and force cannot bend him—this is called a great man.

Seeing the good, be earnest to preserve it in yourself; seeing the not-good, be anxious to examine yourself.

Not leaning is called the Mean; not changing is called Constancy. The Mean is the right Way of the world; Constancy is its settled principle.

Let one not regard the faults of others, nor what others have done or left undone; let one regard rather one's own deeds, done and undone.

You yourselves must strive; the Buddhas only point the way.

Treating pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat as the same…

The Great Way has no gate; there are a thousand paths. Once you pass this checkpoint, you walk alone between heaven and earth.

A day without work is a day without food.

This mind is luminous—what more is there to say?

One must never do injustice in any way.

The beginning is the most important part of any work.

Best for a human being is to live life with as much cheerfulness and as little distress as possible.

Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.

They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.

Resist the beginnings.

Love, and do what you will.

Abandon all hope, you who enter here.

There is no greater pain than to recall happy times in misery.

All of humanity’s misfortune comes from one thing: not knowing how to remain quietly in a room.

Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast.

Man is only fully human where he plays.

Despair is a sickness of the spirit.

The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.

The Master said: The resolute scholar and the man of ren will not seek life at the expense of ren; they may even sacrifice life to accomplish ren.

The Master said: I do not resent Heaven, nor blame men; I learn from below and reach upward.

Only when there are things one will not do, can one then accomplish things.

In pursuing learning, one increases day by day; in pursuing the Way, one decreases day by day. Decreasing and decreasing again, one arrives at non-action.

The stiff and unbending is the disciple of death; the soft and yielding is the disciple of life.

Heaven and earth were born together with me, and the myriad things and I are one.

One must temper oneself in the midst of affairs; only then can one stand firm — settled in stillness and settled in action alike.

Hatreds never cease through hatred in this world.

Contacts with the senses, O son of Kunti, give cold and heat, pleasure and pain; they come and go — endure them.

Go drink tea.

Spring has a hundred flowers, autumn the moon; summer a cool breeze, winter the snow. If no idle affairs hang in the mind, every season is a fine season in the human world.

If the youth are wise, the nation is wise; if the youth are prosperous, the nation is prosperous; if the youth are strong, the nation is strong.

Having become a pawn that has crossed the river, one can only press desperately forward.

The function of philosophy is not to increase positive knowledge, but to raise the level of the spirit.

Human life is but a yearning — to look toward the far and toward the high.

Democratic societies have a natural taste for liberty.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others.

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.

Don’t think, but look!

My propositions serve as elucidations in this way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical.

What does not kill me makes me stronger.

Do not be troubled about whether the rest of life will be long or short, as if that mattered much.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it.

Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.

The heaviest penalty is to be ruled by someone worse than oneself.

Wonder is very much the mark of a philosopher.

Be mostly silent, or speak only what is necessary.

We are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids.

All things are alien to us; time alone is ours.

The best weapons of old age are the arts and practices of the virtues.

Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver.

Man is visibly made to think; that is his whole dignity and his whole merit.

Act so that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle of universal legislation.

Everyone takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Would you have this life again? — Well then! Once more!

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy… can still do.

Zengzi said: A scholar-officer must be broad and resolute, for his burden is heavy and his Way is long.

The Master said: To restrain the self and return to ritual propriety is ren. One day of this, and all under Heaven will turn toward ren.

Nothing under Heaven is softer than water, yet nothing attacks the hard and strong more effectively.

Bent, then whole; crooked, then straight; hollow, then full; worn, then new.

You cannot speak of the ocean to a frog in a well — it is confined by its space.

The fish trap exists for the fish; once you have the fish, you forget the trap.

A dike a thousand li long can collapse from an ant hole.

Know the other and know yourself, and in a hundred battles you will not be in peril.

Before you looked at this flower, it and your mind alike were still; when you come to look, its colors suddenly become clear.

The great method of ordering the world lies in discerning the times and gauging the situation.

Conquer anger by non-anger; conquer evil by good.

To carry the self forward and practice the myriad things is delusion; for the myriad things to come forth and practice the self is enlightenment.

Who would have thought that self-nature is originally pure; who would have thought that self-nature is originally neither born nor destroyed.

Pure experience is identical with direct experience.

The world has kissed my soul with its pain, asking for its return in songs.

What you have inherited from your fathers, earn it in order to possess it.

One cannot say it too often: nothing is more fruitful in wonders than the art of being free.

Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.

The universe… is a machine for the making of gods.

Prayer consists of attention.

Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a standing in, not a falling for.

By “renewing the people” we do not mean abandoning all that is old to follow others. Renewal has two senses: to refine what we already have, and to supply what we lack.

Tolerance is the foundation of all freedom; without tolerance, there is no freedom.

Attitudes toward life are basically three: striving forward, holding the mean in harmony, and turning back inward.

In the realm with a self, one views things through the self, so things take on one’s coloring. In the realm without a self, one views things through things, and no longer knows which is self and which is thing.

He who has begun has half done.

Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new.

Consider what effects… we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

The most ordinary things escape notice precisely because they are ordinary.

To philosophize is to be on the way.

The Good… is to be honored still more highly than knowledge and truth.

You must change your mind, not the sky.

True eloquence mocks eloquence.

Man is a rope stretched between animal and overman — a rope over an abyss.

Those who understand me are few; therefore I am valued.

Perfect friendship is the friendship of those who are good and alike in virtue.

When the Peng bird migrates to the southern darkness, the waters are shaken for three thousand li, and it rises on a whirlwind ninety thousand li high.