100+ Quotations from Famous Philosophers

Wisdom, sharp thinking, and timeless ideas.

Thinking, Knowing, and Reasoning

“I think, therefore I am.” > René Descartes

“The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” > Socrates

“We are what we repeatedly do.” > Aristotle

“Man is the measure of all things.” > Protagoras

“Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will to become a universal law.” > Immanuel Kant

“All men by nature desire to know.” > Aristotle

“The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone.” > John Locke

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” > Ludwig Wittgenstein

“There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not said it.” > Cicero

“To be is to be perceived.” > George Berkeley

“The mind is everything; what you think you become.” > Buddha

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” > David Hume

“All knowledge begins with experience.” > Immanuel Kant

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” > Stephen Hawking

“The mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work unless it’s open.” > Frank Zappa

Life, Existence, and Meaning

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” > Socrates

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” > Friedrich Nietzsche

“Life must be lived as play.” > Plato

“Time is a flat circle.” > Friedrich Nietzsche

“One cannot step twice into the same river.” > Heraclitus

“Man is condemned to be free.” > Jean-Paul Sartre

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” > Confucius

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” > Marcus Aurelius

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” > Arthur Schopenhauer

“The function of man is to live, not to exist.” > Jack London

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” > Søren Kierkegaard

“Existence precedes essence.” > Jean-Paul Sartre

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.” > Lao Tzu

“To be is to do.” > Immanuel Kant

“To do is to be.” > Jean-Paul Sartre

Happiness, Joy, and Fulfillment

“Happiness is the highest good.” > Aristotle

“Hope is a waking dream.” > Aristotle

“Liberty consists in doing what one desires.” > John Stuart Mill

“The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears.” > Albert Einstein

“Nature does nothing in vain.” > Aristotle

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” > Aristotle

“The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.” > Jeremy Bentham

“Pleasure is the beginning and the end of living happily.” > Epicurus

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” > Friedrich Nietzsche

“The happy life is thought to be virtuous.” > Aristotle

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” > Dalai Lama

“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” > Dalai Lama

“Joy is not in things; it is in us.” > Richard Wagner

“The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage.” > Thucydides

“Happiness is only real when shared.” > Christopher McCandless

Knowledge, Learning, and Wisdom

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” > Aristotle

“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” > Victor Hugo

“The mind is everything.” > Buddha

“All is one.” > Parmenides

“The greatest wealth is to live content with little.” > Plato

“Wisdom begins in wonder.” > Socrates

“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.” > René Descartes

“Knowledge is power.” > Francis Bacon

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” > Plutarch

“To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.” > Confucius

“The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger.” > Aristotle

“A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.” > Bruce Lee

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” > William Shakespeare

“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” > Jimi Hendrix

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” > Albert Einstein

Change, Growth, and Progress

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” > Friedrich Nietzsche

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” > Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” > Thomas Hobbes

“Change is never painful. Only resistance to change is painful.” > Buddha

“No man ever steps in the same river twice.” > Heraclitus

“All things change; nothing remains the same.” > Heraclitus

“Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.” > Jean Vanier

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” > Elbert Hubbard

“Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.” > George Orwell

“The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong.” > Simone Weil

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” > Mahatma Gandhi

“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck.” > N. R. Narayana Murthy

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” > Norman Vincent Peale

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.” > Philip Pullman

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it.” > Alan Watts

Truth, Reality, and Perception

“Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.” > Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real.” > Tupac Shakur

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” > Richard Feynman

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” > Albert Einstein

“Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.” > Osho

“Truth is the daughter of time.” > Francis Bacon

“There are no facts, only interpretations.” > Friedrich Nietzsche

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” > Oscar Wilde

“The illusion of truth is more dangerous than the truth itself.” > Søren Kierkegaard

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” > Flannery O’Connor

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” > Albert Einstein

“Truth is stranger than fiction.” > Mark Twain

“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” > James A. Garfield

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” > Aldous Huxley

“The truth is rarely comfortable.” > George Orwell

Human Nature, Behavior, and Emotion

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” > Søren Kierkegaard

“Hell is other people.” > Jean-Paul Sartre

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.” > Jean-Paul Sartre

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.” > Blaise Pascal

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” > Albert Camus

“Man is a social animal.” > Aristotle

“Man is not made for defeat.” > Ernest Hemingway

“The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.” > Tacitus

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” > Albert Camus

“The human condition is defined by the struggle between reason and emotion.” > Plato

“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” > Mark Twain

“The more I see of men, the more I like dogs.” > Madame de Staël

“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties.” > Epictetus

“The human race is a monotonous affair.” > G.K. Chesterton

“Man is a reasoning rather than a reasonable animal.” > Alexander Hamilton